Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class
Devin Fergus
(Author)
Description
The loans ordinary Americans take out to purchase homes and attend college often leave them in a sea of debt. As Devin Fergus explains in Land of the Fee, a not-insignificant portion of that debt comes in the form of predatory hidden fees attached to everyday transactions. Beginning in the 1980s, lobbyists for the financial industry helped dismantle consumer protections, resulting in surreptitious fees-often waived for those who can afford them but not for those who can't. Bluntly put, these hidden fees unfairly keep millions of Americans from their hard-earned money. Journalists and policymakers have identified the primary causes of increasing wealth inequality-fewer good working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative capitalism, and a surge of tax policy decisions that benefit the ultra-rich, among others. However, they miss one commonplace but substantial contributor to the widening divide between the rich and the rest: the explosion of fees on every transaction people make in their daily lives.Land of the Fee traces the system of fees from its origins in the deregulatory wave of the late 1970s to the present. The average consumer now pays a dizzying array of charges for mortgage contracts, banking transactions, auto insurance rates, college payments, and payday loans. These fees are buried in the pages of small-print agreements that few consumers read or understand. Because these fees do not fall under usury laws, they have redistributed wealth to large corporations and their largest shareholders. By exposing this predatory and nearly invisible system of fees, Land of the Fee reshapes our understanding of wealth inequality in America.
Product Details
Price
$29.99
$27.89
Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Publish Date
August 13, 2018
Pages
264
Dimensions
6.4 X 1.0 X 9.3 inches | 1.05 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780199970162
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Devin Fergus is the Arvarh E. Strickland Distinguished Professor of History, Black Studies, and Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. Author of Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics (a CHOICE Outstanding Title for 2010), he has written widely on politics, policy, and inequality in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Slate.
Reviews
"The book does a good job of explaining how finance became the tail that wags the dog of Main Street. And it is a timely work, one with important lessons about the multi-decade dysfunctional dance between Wall Street and Washington that continues today." -Financial Times
"Land of the Fee offers a cogent, historically grounded account of how certain fees have emerged as stealth agents of our gaping wealth disparity." -Washington Monthly
"This book is an outstanding primary text and faculty resource for upper-division and graduate classes in public and taxation policy and financial markets, regulation, and ethics" -- CHOICE
"[P]rovides a valuable history of legislation." -Kirkus Reviews
"Devin Fergus' account of the underside of American finance reveals a world in which living by all the truisms about personal responsibility can somehow leave you poorer than ever before. The chapter on payday lending is especially striking." -Kim Phillips-Fein, New York University, and author of Fear City
"Land of the Fee is an impressive and timely examination of American inequality and of American consumers' growing financial vulnerability since the 1970s. An exceptionally compelling contributor to ongoing public debates, Fergus does a masterful job of debunking common myths about many Americans' current financial predicaments. This is an important book, and anyone with a credit card or a car note should read it!" -John L. Jackson, Jr., co-author of Impolite Conversations: On Race, Politics, Sex, Money, And Religion
"Devin Fergus takes us on a harrowing journey into the vast, unregulated world of consumer fees and hidden charges that have proliferated in recent decades. Land of the Fee is a compelling account of how--dollar by dollar--wealthy corporations have engaged in a massive transfer of wealth to themselves. Fergus makes a powerful case for the necessity of consumer protection and regulatory reform in an anti-regulation age." -Thomas J. Sugrue, New York University
