Quotes from Jessica Bruder

A deepening class divide makes social mobility all but impossible. The result is a de facto caste system. This is not only morally wrong but also tremendously wasteful. Denying access to opportunity for large segments of the population means throwing away vast reserves of talent and brainpower. It's also been shown to dampen economic growth.

Some call them "homeless." The new nomads reject that label. Equipped with both shelter and transportation, they've adopted a new word. They refer to themselves, quite simply, as "houseless

The truth as I see it is that people can both struggle and remain upbeat simultaneously, through even the most soul-testing of challenges.

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops," reflected the late writer Stephen Jay Gould.

We're facing the first-ever reversal in retirement security in modern U.S. history," she explained. "Starting with the younger baby boomers, each successive generation is now doing worse than previous generations in terms of their ability to retire without seeing a drop in living standards.

The last free place in America is a parking spot.

The capitalists don't want anyone living off their economic grid.

And there is hope on the road. It's a by-product of forward momentum. A sense of opportunity, as wide as the country itself. A bone-deep conviction that something better will come.

the Amazon encampments began to seem more and more like microcosms of a national catastrophe.

vandwellers are conscientious objectors from a broken, corrupting social order.

Introverts Unite: We're Here, We're Uncomfortable, and We Want to Go Home,

People come and go in your life. You don't get to hang onto them forever.

reason Amazon can take on such a slow, inefficient workforce," noted one itinerant worker on her blog, Tales from the Rampage. "Since they are getting us off government assistance for almost three months of the year, we are a tax deduction for them.

Americans now fear outliving their assets more than they fear dying.

401(k)s were part of a larger cultural drift in America away from shared responsibilities toward a more precarious individualism.

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves . . . Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.

people not only buck up in times of crisis, but do so with a "startling, sharp joy." It's possible to undergo hardships that shake our will to endure, while also finding happiness in shared moments, such as sitting around a bonfire with fellow workampers under a vast starry sky.

It's sad—but not surprising—that teeth have become a status symbol in a country where more than one in three citizens lack dental coverage, which isn't included with standard medical insurance.)

Being human means yearning for more than subsistence. As much as food or shelter, we require hope.

How does a hardworking sixty-four-year-old-woman end up without a house or a permanent place to stay, relying on unpredictable low-wage work to survive? Living in a mile-high alpine wilderness, with intermittent snow and maybe mountain lions in a tiny trailer, scrubbing toilets at the mercy of employers who, on a whim, could cut her hours or even fire her? What does the future look like for someone like that?

Many hoped life on the road would be an escape from an otherwise empty future.

The top 1 percent now makes eighty-one times what those in the bottom half do, when you compare average earnings. For American adults on the lower half of the income ladder—some 117 million of them—earnings haven't changed since the 1970s.

MANY OF THE WORKERS I met in the Amazon camps were part of a demographic that in recent years has grown with alarming speed: downwardly mobile older Americans. In the heyday of a place like Empire—the era of a strong middle class, complete with job stability and pensions—their circumstances had been virtually unimaginable.

Sameer and LaVonne were not naive. They know that, in the eyes of the law, they are homeless. But who can live under the weight of that word? The term "homeless" has metastasized beyond its literal definition, becoming a terrible threat. It whispers: Exiles. The Fallen. The Other. Those Who Have Nothing Left. "Our society's untouchables," LaVonne suggested on her blog.