Overview

Finance is an inescapable part of American life. From how one pursues an education, buys a home, runs a business, or saves for retirement, finance orders the lives of ordinary Americans. And as finance continues to expand, inequality soars. In Divested, Ken-Hou Lin and Megan Tobias Neely document how the ascendance of finance on Wall Street, Main Street, and among households is a fundamental cause of economic inequality. They argue that finance has reshaped the economy in three important ways. First, the financial sector extracts resources from the economy at large without providing commensurate economic benefits to those outside the financial services industry. Second, firms in other economic sectors have become increasingly involved in lending and speculative investing, which weakens the demand for labor and the bargaining power of workers. And third, the shift of risks and uncertainties once shouldered by unions, corporations, and governments onto families escalates the consumption of financial products, which in turns exacerbates wealth inequality. A clear, comprehensive, and convincing account of the forces driving economic inequality in America, Divested warns us that the most damaging consequence of the expanding financial system is not simply recurrent financial crises but a widening social divide between the have and have-nots.

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9781665176651

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Ken-Hou Lin is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research examines how the economic and demographic changes in the past four decades shape the distribution of resources in the United States. Megan Tobias Neely is a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Chris Sorensen is a veteran audiobook narrator with over 160 titles to his name. He has received three AudioFile Earphones Awards, and his recording of Sent by Margaret Peterson Haddix (Recorded Books, LLC) was selected as one of the Best Audiobooks of 2010 by AudioFile magazine. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA and the APA. Chris has worked extensively as an actor, playwright, and screenwriter. He studied at the Rutgers Professional Actor Training Program under William Esper, Edward Stern, and Maggie Flanigan. He is an original member of the Present Company, producers of FringeNYC. The Thin Air Theatre Company of Colorado considers him their playwright-at-large and has produced thirteen of his plays over the past twelve years. He has numerous optioned screenplays and has recently completed his first book for kids, The Mad Scientists of New Jersey.

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