Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest.

Ehrenreich has two children. She divorced Stevenson in 1993. In 1983 Barbara Ehrenreich married Gary Stevenson a union organizer for the Teamsters.

She is a widely-read and award-winning columnist and essayist and author of 21 books. During the 1980s and early 1990s Barbara Ehrenreich was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. Barbara Ehrenreich (pron.