About this episode

Jessi Hempel interviews Alissa Quart about the growing financial insecurity in America and its implications on society.

“It’s not your fault.” This is the message Alissa Quart has spent over a decade trying to get people to believe when it comes to economic hardship. Right now, it feels harder than ever to embrace. Alissa Quart is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, the nonprofit Barbara Ehrenreich built after writing her groundbreaking exposé Nickel and Dimed. A journalist herself, Alissa is the author of seven books, including Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America and Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. She's spent over a decade reporting on class, caregiving, and economic precarity. In this episode, Jessi and Alissa discuss: Why "insecurity" is a more honest and unifying framework than "affordability," and how it builds solidarity across class lines The data behind it: 52% of US families are now financially insecure by one measure, and nearly half of workers lack confidence they could find a job they'd want "Apocalyptic insecurity": the new framework Alissa and economist Lynn Parramore developed to describe how employers use AI dread to manipulate workers The Frederick Taylor parallel: how AI is repeating the logic of scientific…

People in this episode

Host: Jessi Hempel

Guest: Alissa Quart

Topics covered

• financial insecurity
• economic hardship
• class and caregiving
• AI in the workplace
• generational progress
• universal basic income

Keywords

• financial security
• economic precarity
• AI manipulation
• class solidarity
• psychological injury

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Barbara Ehrenreich

Books & works: Nickel and Dimed, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream

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