Present-day class divisions also have parallels in older class structures. Biss highlights the ways in which reinforcing class divisions ultimately harms most people and benefits only the very wealthy.

Relatedly, Biss interrogates the concept of ‘class,’ which is often defined not only by personal wealth, but also by social habits that a person adopts in order to project ‘membership’ to a certain class. For example, Biss considers the activity of investing in the stock market, which necessarily constitutes profiting from the labor of other people.

Nonetheless, Biss does directly acknowledge wealth disparity as a major problem in the United States, with a majority of the country’s wealth being controlled by less than one percent of the population.Īdditionally, Biss considers somewhat abstract ideas of capitalism, which nevertheless carry very urgent dynamics related to morality. Moreover, economics is often very complicated in and of itself, and thus it can be difficult to fully understand how best to address problems of wealth disparity. For example, Biss notes historical and current dynamics by which Black Americans are systematically denied equal economic/property rights as white Americans. Moreover, in the modern consumer culture, it often feels difficult to form meaningful, long-lasting connections with other people, including neighbors.īiss also highlights connections between economic injustice and social injustice. Biss begins by considering the nature of consumerism and commercialism, which often seem to create extraneous needs rather than satisfy vital needs. The book is structured as 88 brief essays, each of which is technically self-contained, but which often overlap in terms of theme and subject matter. In this book, creative nonfiction writer Eula Biss explores concepts related to money and work. The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Biss, Eula.

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