I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt
Everything I Wish I Never Had to Learn About Money
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"Madeline's life is unique yet wildly relatable...Readers will be thoroughly engaged, as every hardship comes with a lesson that Madeline skillfully shares with us. A thought-provoking, mind-tingling reading experience."—Mercury Stardust, the Trans Handy Ma’am and author of Safe and Sound
Imagine a job where you work four days a week and earn as much as the CEO. You also get full benefits, a gym membership, free lunch, and unlimited time off, no questions asked. Hard-won profits don’t just end up in the CEO’s pocket—they’re distributed equally among all employees. The company even buys you your very own car. It sounds too good to be true, but this is the reality at Tunnel Vision, the clothing company that Madeline Pendleton built from the ground up.
Like so many Americans, Madeline used to struggle to make ends meet. Raised by a punk dad and a goth mom in Fresno, California, she spent her teens intermittently homeless, relying on the kindness and spare couches of the local punk community to get by. By her twenties, she was drowning in student loans and credit card debt, working long hours and sick of her bosses treating her as disposable. Then her boyfriend, struggling with financial stress, died by suicide. Capitalism was literally killing her loved ones—she knew there must be a better way.
Madeline decided to study the rules of capitalism, the game everyone is forced to play. She used what she learned to build a new kind of business, one rooted in an ethos of community care.
Millennials and Gen Zers like Madeline are facing an unprecedented financial reality: Stagnant wages, skyrocketing housing costs, a student debt crisis. I Survived Capitalism is essential reading for anyone searching for hope and stability in an unjust world.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 16, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593821152
- File size: 242923 KB
- Duration: 08:26:05
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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November 13, 2023
Pendleton, founder of the clothing company Tunnel Vision, shines in her idiosyncratic debut memoir-cum-finance guide. Raised in a money-strapped household in Fresno, Calif., Pendleton took a series of low-paying jobs before getting hired in the marketing department of a “high-end jewelry brand” where her boss taught her how to negotiate and the basics of personal finance. In 2011, she decided to start her own business redesigning and selling secondhand clothing. Describing her struggle to structure the company equitably, she explains that she initially strived for a cooperative-style arrangement that gave employees far-reaching autonomy over clothing sales, but found that this merely foisted the “stress of business ownership” onto each employee, leading her to reconfigure the business more traditionally while distributing compensation and profit evenly among employees, including herself. Pendleton is a penetrating critic of economic injustice and the shortcomings of traditional personal finance programs, noting that it’s “intrinsically impossible for everyone” to follow such common suggestions as becoming a landlord. Her substantial guidance on “how to run an equitable business” is a refreshing alternative to the lip service found in other manuals (“Be radically transparent about all things financial”; “Pay everyone equally for their labor”). This stands out from the pack. Agents: Caroline Marsiglia and Rick Richter, Aevitas Creative Management.
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