I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt: Everything I Wish I Never Had to Learn About Money

I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt: Everything I Wish I Never Had to Learn About Money

Madeline Pendleton

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A big-hearted, no-bullshit memoir from the TikTok superstar about her journey from living paycheck to paycheck to creating a multi-million-dollar business that offers a compassionate alternative to capitalism • Includes no-nonsense life and money advice, from negotiating pay and building credit to putting home ownership within reach"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 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. Madeline: “I never wanted to write a book about money. I wanted to read a book about money, a book that acknowledged the financial reality that our generations were born into. What I found instead were books written by men much older than me about how to survive in a world that didn’t seem to exist anymore.”


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    Truly maybe a life changing book for myself and anyone who reads it because it shows you a new option for your future that you didn’t know was possible.

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    I have a shirt that says "what's more punk than the public library?" and I feel like this book has the same energy.

    Part memoir, part 21st century America survival guide. I am surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Also surprised by the fact this book made me cry not at the sad parts, but at the hopeful ones. Sometimes it feels like the most radical thing you can do it imagine a better future.

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