U.S. Poor and Working Class Distress Grows
Too much month and not enough check plagued the U.S. poor and working class before the federal government shutdown and funding lapse. To wit, business is booming for America’s car repossession industry. In fact, there were 769,925 car repossessions for the third quarter of 2025 versus 706,383 for this year’s second quarter. “If all of this goes as expected, 2025 will show to be the busiest year the repo session industry has ever seen on record,” according to Recovery Database Network.
Texas has the most car repossessions by state, with 319,754, year-to-date. Florida has the second-most auto repossessions with 222,523. California, the nation’s most populous state, ranks third in total repossession volume year-to-date.
The trend of rising car repossessions has a widespread impact. Consider the financial services industry. “A crisis in the U.S. auto loan market was signaled on October 22, 2025,” according to msn.com, “when PrimaLend Capital Partners, a significant subprime auto lender with headquarters in Plano, Texas, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. PrimaLend’s demise highlights the mounting stress among subprime borrowers—those with bad credit—who depend on financing to purchase cars through “buy-here-pay-here” (BHPH) dealerships.”
Subprime lending, recall, was the match that lit the fire of the crash in housing prices that caused the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Democratic President Obama, elected on his campaign pledge of “hope and change,” delivered a bailout for mortgage lenders and a sellout for foreclosed home buyers. That political decision to aid Wall Street instead of Main Street helped to create the socioeconomic conditions for the election of President Trump, twice.
Sadly given the weak supply of mass transit in the U.S., driving a personal car is a necessity to get to and from work for scores of Americans. At the same time, the success of the corporate-government war on labor unions has driven growth of nonunion employment. The union membership rate of 20.1 percent in 1983 fall to 9.9 percent in 2024, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data. This widespread trend has led to a term to describe........





















Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Tarik Cyril Amar
Stefano Lusa
Mort Laitner
Robert Sarner
Mark Travers Ph.d
Andrew Silow-Carroll
Ellen Ginsberg Simon