Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class

Abstract

“The rich are different than you and me; they have more money.” Regardless of whether, per an oft-repeated literary legend, a conclusive exchange of that sort occurred between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, Devin Fergus's book provides a poignant and sobering rejoinder (Eddy Dow, “The Rich Are Different,” New York Times, Nov. 13, 1988). The poor are different, Fergus explains. They pay more fees. In Land of the Fee Fergus writes the history of fees into the larger story of American social and economic life since 1980. Structured around four key developments in the history of debt—subprime lending, student debt, automobile insurance, and payday lending—the book argues that policy decisions, racial ideology, and class prejudices have spawned a massive transfer of wealth from poor and middle-class Americans to an elite few. In the process, Fergus shows “how deregulation has contributed to exposing the nation's entire financial system to unsafe banking practices and systemic risk” (p. 162).