Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

Driving on, they’re secure in this knowledge: The last free place in America is a parking spot.

And when it comes to Social Security benefits, female recipients get on average $341 a month less than men because of lower total payroll tax contributions, an under-recognized consequence of the gender wage gap.

It took the Great Depression to make retirement into a reality in the United States. There were too many workers, too few jobs, and a consequent sense that the elderly needed to be nudged out of the labor pool.

ALL OF THIS HAD A PRECEDENT. In the mid-1930s, with America in the grip of the Great Depression, house trailers went into mass production for the first time.

Today the United States has the most unequal society of all developed nations. America’s level of inequality is comparable to that of Russia, China, Argentina, and the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo.