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You've probably heard the term “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” referring to one's ability to pick themselves up, and get to work. But what if we said the whole phrase was actually a joke? There's no one better to explain this than Alissa Quart, an author, professor at Brown and Columbia Universities, and the Executive Director of the Economic Hardships Reporting Project and the author of the book “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream” and “Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America.” We sat down with Alissa to talk about how the great American myth of the ‘self-made' person, may be just that: a myth, and one that is weaponized to keep support systems and opportunities out of the hands of some of our nation's poorest workers. This is another episode you're not going to want to miss, so with that…let's bring it in!
Join Haymarket Books and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project for a conversation celebrating the launch of the anthology Going for Broke. Join Alissa Quart in conversation with Alex Miller, Annabelle Gurwitch, Katha Pollitt and Ray Suarez, to celebrate the launch of the anthology Going for Broke, a collaboration between Haymarket Books and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Get a copy of Going For Broke: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/... Check out the podcast series “Going for Broke” hosted by Ray Suarez in partnership between EHRP, The Nation and NPR: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/11683107... You can read Alex's latest article here: https://www.wired.com/story/tech-vide... Read this powerful op-ed from Annabelle: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outloo... Submit pitches to EHRP at info@economichardship.org Donate to EHRP at: https://economichardship.org/donate-t... Speakers: Alissa Quart is the author of Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream and executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She has written for many publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time. Her honors include an Emmy Award, the SPJ Award, and a Nieman Fellowship. She is the author of four previous books of nonfiction, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America and Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, and two books of poetry, most recently Thoughts and Prayers. Alex Miller, a reporting journalism fellow for EHRP, is a navy veteran and native Chicagoan. He's been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Esquire, and Wired. In addition, he has also been featured in the anthologies The Byline Bible and The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook. He lives in New York and is writing a mid-grade memoir about his experience of going to school for the first time at eleven years old. Annabelle Gurwitch is a New York Times bestselling author of five books, a Thurber Prize for American Humor Writing finalist, and an actress. Her writing frequently appears in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles Magazine. This essay, which was awarded an Excellence in Journalism citation by the Los Angeles Press Corp, is included in a longer form in her most recent collection of essays, You're Leaving When? Adventures in Downward Mobility, a New York Times Favorite Book for Healthy Living 2022. Ray Suarez (@RaySuarezNews) was a senior correspondent for PBS News- Hour and host of the public radio show America Abroad. He is host of EHRP's podcast Going for Broke and co-hosts the program and podcast WorldAffairs for KQED-FM and the World Affairs Council. Katha Pollitt, the author of Virginity or Death!, is a poet, essayist, and columnist for The Nation. She has won many prizes and awards for her work, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for her first collection of poems, Antarctic Traveller, and two National Magazine Awards for essays and criticism. She lives in New York City. This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/tFRHrFqF8ls Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
In America, there's been an increase of available jobs, and there's also been a series of high-profile layoffs, strikes, and calls for unionization. The social safety net for workers is disappearing, so what can people do? Sean Illing speaks with Alissa Quart about her new book, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, about why people need to rid themselves of the American Dream's individualistic ideals and embrace dependence in order to succeed. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: Alissa Quart (@lisquart), author of nonfiction and poetry, and co-creator of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project References: Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream by Alissa Quart (Harper Collins, 2023) Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America by Alissa Quart (Harper Collins, 2019) Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall–And Those Fighting To Reverse It by Steven Brill (Penguin Random House, 2018) Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by: Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
B”H Today we are taking a more macro look at our finances. We're addressing the American Dream, and the idea of “bootstrapping,” with Economic Journalist Alissa Quart. Alissa has covered economic hardship in much of her acclaimed work, including her last book Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America, and her upcoming book Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. She's Executive Director of the non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting The post 309: Debunking the Myth of the American Dream with Alissa Quart, Author of Squeezed & Bootstrapped appeared first on Jewish Latin Princess.
Alissa Quart, the author of several books, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America, offers insights into her in-depth reporting on economic hardship. We discussed the people who now make up the “middle precariat,” those considered middle-class professionals living a precarious economic life, who are just barely making it, underemployed and/or saddled with debt. We discuss how generations are being squeezed, what inequality looks like and how to build a better future. To listen to Alissa's audio series Going for Broke, click here. For more related content in our "Priced Out" series on CNET Money, click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Alissa Quart is Executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She is the author of five books of nonfiction, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America, and the forthcoming Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream Alissa also writes for the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the New York Times among others. It was a great conversation about the stories we tell, the myths we need to dispel and the role of language in helping people overcome hardship. Links to learn more about: Alissa Quart Economic Hardship Reporting Project Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream Find out more: https://movingupusa.com/podcast HOST Bob McKinnon is a writer, designer, and teacher who asks us to reconsider the way we see success and the American Dream. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Fast Company, NPR, and PBS. His own journey out of poverty was captured in his TEDx talk: How Did I End Up Here. Through his writing and this podcast, he hopes to pay tribute and thanks to all those who have helped him and others move up in life. CREDITS Attribution is distributed in part by Chasing the Dream, a public media initiative from PBS flagship station, WNET in New York, reporting on poverty, justice, and economic opportunity in America. You can learn more at pbs.org/chasingthedream. This show was edited by No Troublemakers Media. Music by Jonnie “Most” Davis. Our final credit goes to you, the listener, and to everyone who helped you get to where you are today. If this show has reminded you of someone in particular, make their day and let them know.
Alissa Quart is a total media author. She is the author of four non-fiction books, writes the Outclassed column for The Guardian, Alissa is the Executive Editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a non-profit devoted to commissioning, editing and placing reportage about inequality.A 2018 Columbia Journalism School Alumna of the year, been a Nieman fellow, an Emmy-nominated video writer and producer, and a professor. And in her spare time she has wrote her latest non-fiction book, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America,
Alissa Quart, Author “Squeezed” Join me as I talk with the author of Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America. A featured book at the Miami Book Fair and the second book by Ms. Quart. It’s a fascinating look at how families are struggling with high childcare costs while enduring increasing demands from employers. Alissa outlines how she feels about this difficult time in young families’ lives and suggests remedies to the situation. You’ll be riveted! Alissa Quart’s Squeezed https://www.miamibookfair.com/
This week on the Heartland Labor Forum, we'll ask: Is work as we know it disappearing as the middle class gets squeezed, and then gigged? We talk to two authors […] The post Two Books about the Decline of Work and the Middle Class: Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work and Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America appeared first on KKFI.
One of the lies many of us have bought over the years is the American Dream. It seemed to work - at least back in the day of the GI bill and guaranteed mortgages. You work hard, go to college, and things will work out. You’ll be okay. And now, a lot of us who were privileged enough to be able to follow that path, are finding ourselves unable to reach that place of security anymore. It’s a new precarity - shared by almost everyone in America today - and what our guest Alissa Quart has beautifully documented in work at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and in her new book, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America. In today’s conversation, Alissa deconstructs the individualist, pull yourself up by the bootstraps myth, and looks at the way the system has failed so many Americans. “It’s not your fault,” emerges as the theme from Alissa’s eye-opening research and reporting.Today’s show begins with a monologue from Douglas on how the dynamics of cult thinking might help us understand the seemingly irrational commitment to Trump by his supporters. A full transcript of the essay that inspired this talk can be found on Rushkoff’s Medium page. If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our very first episode with debt resisters Astra Taylor and Thomas Gokey. Also mentioned in today’s show was Episode 93 guest Palak Shah whose work at the National Domestic Workers Alliance resonates with the many of the topics discussed in this episode.This show features intro music sampled from Fugazi’s Foreman’s Dog courtesy of Dischord records. Musical interludes include new, unreleased music from Herkimer Diamonds courtesy of Majestic Litter: https://majesticlitter.bandcamp.com/.You also heard a sampled loop from Episode 31 guest and Mondo 2000 creator, R.U. Sirius and closing the show is a track from Mike Watt’s Hyphenated Man LP. Go to TeamHuman.fm/support to support the show. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
“It's the economy, stupid.” Those words have become ingrained into our politics. But seldom have we seen such a disconnect between raw data, the kind that President Donald Trump bragged about on Friday, and the economy people are actually living in. Journalist Alissa Quart, in her new book Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America, went looking for the real America. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast she talks to Jeff Schechtman about what she found. She discovered an America that is a far cry from one where anyone is jumping up and down over a 4.1 percent GDP increase in a single quarter. In fact, after ten years of steady growth, which began during the Obama presidency, the overhang of the Great Recession as well as some negative employment and economic trends that started before the recession are still with us. Wages have been stagnant, housing costs continue to go up, health care costs continue to rise, education requires more and more debt, and self employment and the gig economy have not helped. All of this is before we are even really feeling the full impact of automation and AI. Quart argues that we have to reassess what we value in society. Instead of being so happy at the lower cost of consumer goods — like our phones, computers, and TVs — we need to be far more concerned that the cost of basic necessities like healthcare, child care, senior care, education, and housing have skyrocketed. Quart reminds us that this is not a problem limited to the uneducated. She talks to Schechtman about the plight of professors, school teachers, health professionals, and journalists. According to statistics, kids today have only a 50/50 chance of doing better than their parents. Equally striking is how few of these would-be members of the middle class are politically engaged. They're exhausted from just getting from bind to bind. Many are cobbling together patchwork solutions, like co-living arrangements and shared child care. But, Quart explains, for those struggling, a lot of time is often spent watching the 1 percent on television — viewing a kind of “aspirational porn.” Maybe that's also how Trump got a toehold with so many of these same people. Before you hear the next boastful presidential report on the economy, this is a must listen. Alissa Quart is the author of Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America (Ecco Press, June 26, 2018).
This week, journalist Alissa Quart talks about her new book “Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America,” which chronicles the demise of the middle class. Inc. editors and writers also talk about how a personalized vitamin startup launched a fake company on Facebook to test its technology before going to market and the group also explores this year’s most popular hacking methods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Suzi talks to Joel Jordan and then Alissa Quart, who in different ways are both looking at our squeezed post-recession lives and the fight to win or win back a decent standard of living. Longtime teacher and teacher-union strategist Joel Jordan joins us to talk about the spectacular mass strikes of the red-state teachers — and draw comparisons with the worsening conditions for teachers in California. Then, Suzi seapks with Alissa Quart about her new book, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America, which tells the stories of the financial instability — and downward mobility — of what she calls the "middle precariat": highly educated but insecure, so-called middle-class Americans who can barely afford to raise children and meet expenses.
Gaby takes a look at the stories we tell about poverty. Tanvi Misra, a writer at CityLab sets up the stark statistics that make up our economic mobility reality. Alana Semuels, a staff writer at The Atlantic takes a look at how those statistics play out in the South. Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and author of "Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America" breaks down the myth of the middle class. And finally, Nisha Patel, who served as the executive director of the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty gives us a glimpse at how to change the narrative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Arena Club: arenaclub.com/badmoney* Check out Chime: chime.com/BADMONEY* Check out Claritin: www.claritin.com* Check out Indeed: indeed.com/BADWITHMONEY* Check out Monarch Money: monarchmoney.com/BADMONEY* Check out NetSuite: NetSuite.com/BADWITHMONEYAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy