POVERTY FOR PROFIT | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including antipoverty programs such as the earned income tax credit, Medicaid, and affordable housing vouchers and subsidies. States and local governments spend tens of billions more. Ironically, these enormous sums fuel the “corporate poverty complex,” a vast web of hidden industries and entrenched private-sector interests that profit from the bureaucracies regulating the lives of the poor. From bail bondsmen to dialysis providers to towing companies, their business models depend on exploiting low-income Americans, and their political influence ensures a thriving set of industries where everyone profits except the poor, while U.S. taxpayers foot the bill.

In POVERTY FOR PROFIT, veteran journalist Anne Kim investigates the multiple industries that infiltrate almost every aspect of the lives of the poor—health care, housing, criminal justice, and nutrition. She explains how these businesses are aided by public policies such as the wholesale privatization of government services and the political influence these industries wield over lawmakers and regulators.

Supported by original investigative reporting on the lesser-known players profiting from the antipoverty industry, POVERTY FOR PROFIT adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of how structural inequality and structural racism function today.

Anne Kim is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside Jeremie Greer, nonprofit founder and policy expert, to share more about her research and how these companies’ exploitative practices affect everyday Americans. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Kim will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of POVERTY FOR PROFIT will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed. 

We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books

Anne Kim is a writer, lawyer, and public policy expert with a long career in Washington, DC–based think tanks working in and around Capitol Hill. She is also a contributing editor at Washington Monthly, where she was a senior writer. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Governing, TheAtlantic.com, the Wall Street Journal, Democracy, and numerous other publications. The author of Abandoned: America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection and Poverty for Profit (both from The New Press), she lives in northern Virginia.

Jeremie Greer has dedicated his life and career to the advancement of racial and economic justice. Growing up in the historically Black Rondo Neighborhood, in St. Paul, Minnesota, he has always been attuned to the intersection between race and economics. He began his career in the Columbia Heights and Shaw neighborhoods in Washington, DC, organizing youth and tenants to fight back against the economic forces rapidly gentrifying that community.  Working at the national level in the federal government’s premier policy agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and at two national non-profits, the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) and Prosperity Now (formerly CFED), he has become a national policy expert on the causes and the policy solutions to close the racial wealth gap. Jeremie has a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work from the University of St. Thomas, a Master’s in Public Policy from George Mason University, and an Executive Education Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership from Harvard University’s Kennedy School. Jeremie is also a Soros Equality Fellow.

Host or Publisher Busboys and Poets