Debt: A Reading List

newyorker:

“My Misspent Youth”

“I’m twenty-nine years old, and I am completely over my head in debt. I have not made a life for myself; I have purchased a life for myself.” 

“A Student-Debt Revolt Begins”

“Corinthian Colleges’ downfall has come to be seen as a symbol of the ills of for-profit higher education—the false promises of employment, the mounting student debt, the aggressive collection tactics.”

“Killing It”

“A generation has inherited a world without being able to live in it. A young college graduate might now find herself in a position akin to a homeowner with negative equity.”

“Pay Up”

“In the greater Buffalo metropolitan area, more than five thousand people earn a living as debt collectors. That’s more than the number of taxi-drivers, bakers, butchers, steelworkers, roofers, crane operators, hotel clerks, and brick masons combined.” 

“The Scold”

“Mr. Money Mustache is the alias of a forty-one-year-old Canadian expatriate named Peter Adeney, who made or, more to the point, saved enough money in his twenties, working as a software engineer, to retire at age thirty.”

“Take the Money and Run”

“A universal basic income, or U.B.I., is a fixed income that every adult—rich or poor, working or idle—automatically receives from the government. Unlike today’s means-tested or earned benefits, payments are usually the same size, and arrive without request.”