A profitable poverty industry profits from the poor via pay-day and pawn services

Evidence

Even the poor are not immune. In North America, of course, we have seen the rise of sub-prime lending, but this is only one aspect of a larger financial poverty industry made up of extremely profitable pay-day loans operations, pawn shops and discount financial services aimed at short-term profiteering from social immiseration (Aitken 2006; Rivlin 2010; Wyly et al. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 72

Categorization

• XREF: The financialization-of-poverty thesis feeds deWaard’s cultural argument about finance’s colonization of all strata. — connects to: Microfinance extended debt to the poorest as a moralizing free-market project — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 73; Service industries can extract surplus value and prolong capitalism’s viability — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 132; A contractor can extract profit from both prisoner earnings and spending — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 211 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Finance is promoted to the poor as a moral rather than merely economic good #corroborates (0.82) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 161
• A contractor can extract profit from both prisoner earnings and spending #exemplifies (0.80) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 211
• Service industries can extract surplus value and prolong capitalism’s viability #exemplifies (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 132
• Microfinance extended debt to the poorest as a moralizing free-market project #expands (0.74) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 73
• Incarceration functions as warehousing of poor and unassimilated populations #exemplifies (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 466