Weighing Every Cost: A Genteel Poverty
I am the youngest of 10 siblings. My dad built a successful plumbing business, bought his own shop and employed a few helpers at the... Read More
The Gig Economy and The Creative
A Perfect Match, Right? People with power tend to view gigs as hobbies, or sometimes lucrative endeavors in the “sharing economy.” Everybody knows Uber drivers,... Read More
Surviving in the Gig Economy
As a creative person without a degree, the gig economy field has always appealed to me. I have had various jobs in customer service that... Read More
Gig Economy Hustle
I stare through wild green houseplants out my bedroom window. A robot voice over the phone guides me through my student loan servicer’s menu. “Lower... Read More
Affordable vs. Attainable Housing
When you think affordable housing, you think $600,000 for a condo, right? With a $12,000 down payment, that would be $3,557 per month for 30 years. Maybe that’s... Read More
Vacationing Broke
Being poor can feel like you’re stuck, and when everyone you know disappears into the world when they have the chance, you realize how truly... Read More
Choosing Not to Go Into Debt for College
Nicole Brown wrote the following after reading, and being so affected by, last month’s (May 2016) Classism Exposed blog post on the possibility that students are deciding not to... Read More
Avoiding Loans at Any Cost
Recently, community college students in a class taught by Classism Exposed contributor L.A. Kurth (see her note at the bottom of the post) responded to... Read More
Forgoing College to Forgo Debt
In education, we are headed toward a perfect storm. Increasingly large numbers of capable students are so afraid of incurring debt that they are deciding... Read More
Debt-Shaming in Contemporary Capitalism
I know that Dave Ramsey’s advice has done a lot of good things for a lot of people. There are thousands of people who are... Read More
Class Divide in Internships
Last summer I was hired as an intern for an education advocacy group in Seattle. It was my first time working as an intern and... Read More
Cross-class College Interactions
College, they tell us, is the great middle class-making machine. When I think back on my own cross-class interactions at college, I mostly feel gratitude... Read More
What’s needed at this political moment? 5 well-known leftists, 5 strong opinions
At the Working-Class Studies conference last weekend, I heard an amazing dialogue about class, race and movement-building by five progressive journalists and activist scholars: Juan... Read More
Poverty and Disability: the Vicious Circle
I first started to look at disability as a class issue when 18 of our members from Piedmont Peace Project and I attended a national... Read More
Misconception of debt
Like many college students, I recently took out my first loan for college. Although not a significant amount, it was still more than I’ve ever... Read More