Alissa Quart, director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP), recently authored a book called Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. Earlier this year, I had to chance to talk with Quart about her new book, her description of contemporary US social policy as having created a “dystopian social safety net,” and her thoughts about how to build a US society that is centered on mutual caring and economic justice.

Steve Dubb: Can you explain what led you to write Bootstrapped, and how do you feel that your new book differs from or builds on the work you did in previous books like Squeezed?

Alissa Quart: Definitely, it builds on Squeezed. My tagline for Squeezed was: “It’s not your fault.” By the end of it, I was asking myself: “Why do people think poverty is their fault? And why do other people think that people who are struggling, not just the poor, but the people who are sliding down from the middle class, are themselves the ones to blame for their problems?”

Read the full interview in Nonprofit Quarterly.