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Focuses on Wal-Mart stores' prices and customers and its connection to poverty in the United States. Claim that Wal-Mart markets itself to low-income people and especially to poor women; Reference to a study by Andrew Franklin which showed that Wal-Mart operates primarily in poor and working-class communities; Statement that half of Wal-Mart Supercenter customers are blue collar workers and their families, while 20 percent are unemployed or elderly; Suggestion that Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton figured out how to make money off of poverty; Claim that the wages paid to Wal-Mart employees perpetuates poverty; Statement that Wal-Mart routinely violates laws protecting workers' organizing rights; Report that Wal-Mart discriminates against women in pay and promotions; Identification between the retail clerks at Wal-Mart and its customers; Discussion of the lack of impact of boycotts against Wal-Mart; Discussion of the female customer's loyalty to Wal-Mart; Report that Wal-Mart has encouraged its employees to collect public assistance so that it can avoid paying higher wages and benefits.

The author argues that the Colorado Family Planning Initiative experimental program, which provides long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) such as intrauterine contraceptives (IUDs) and hormonal implants to low-income teenage girls and young women, is an effective program which has reduced the state's teenage pregnancy rate despite the fact that the conservatives in Colorado's government have failed to fund the initiative. Birth control costs and U.S. federal laws are examined.

The author urges the U.S. government to adopt the public-utility regulations to control monopolies that become rampant in the country. He cites first the dangers of the rising monopolies. He stresses that public-utility regulation does not discriminate disadvantaged consumers from accessing certain resources and regulates prices. He adds that preventing monopolies will promote innovations.

The author reports that tax preparation services are marketing tax refund loans with high interest rates and large fees to low-income Americans. The advertised cash is really a bank loan made against the expected return, carrying staggering annual interest rates that can range from nearly 90 percent to 1,800 percent, including fees. In the trade it's called a "refund anticipation loan," a RAL. More than half the people who get RALs have incomes low enough to qualify for the federal earned-income tax credit, one of the last shreds of the social safety net. Taxpayers spent an estimated $1.5 billion for RALs and related fees in 2002. H& R Block, America's best-known tax preparation service, got a nice piece of the action. It's a well-thought-out and--thus far--perfectly legal scam, in which the tax professional calculates the amount of the customer's refund and offers an instant refund, which turns out to be a loan provided by a collaborating bank. The customer gets a check for the amount of the refund, all right, but minus a healthy percentage deducted for interest along with an average $32 fee to the tax preparation service for arranging the loan and another $25 fee for the lending bank. National ACORN organizer Lisa Donner says customers coming in for tax preparation are given deceptive information to deter them from pursuing less expensive options than RALs, and many, like Hylton, are unaware that their up-front cash is a loan.