Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America - Barbara Ehrenreich
Great book. The author (a PhD in biology oddly enough) is a sociology essayist. She undertook field research - she started in Key Largo and got a waitress job and tried to survive on the wages for a month. Then she repeated the experiment in Maine, where she worked as a maid and residential care assistant (two jobs). Then in Minnesota, at Wal-Mart.
What'd she discover? How impossible it is to survive on minimum wage. How many of her coworkers were homeless, hungry, and unhealthy (no health care). Minimum wage is nice if you just want to buy some CD's and you're 16. But if you have any type of adult responsibility, it just doesn't work.
In particular, I really appreciated her footnotes (great source material) and her "evaluation" essay at the end was extremely compelling (she even elicited some "wow's" from me). Exellent book. The problem with poverty in our country is not unemployment - it's underpaying. People work really really hard and suffer from it.
IT was on the New York Times Bestseller list for a long time, and that makes me chuckle - those readers aren't usually people who've ever done these types of jobs. Great for Ehrenreich to make visible the people who fuel forward our country - the underpaid.
I didn't need that convincing - and it made me realize why I'm so adamant about so many of my political beliefs. I've been those underpaid people. In addition to working at WIC, with migrant farm laborers, and with abused women and children, I've also been the poor underpaid person myself. I've:
delivered newspapers
weighed dump trucks
been a secretary (so many times)
worked at a gas station
been a waitress
worked in fast food (I hate cleaning grease traps)
been a hotel maid
been a housecleaner
worked at a hotel front desk
been a nanny (more than once)
been a clerk-typist
worked picking and cleaning produce
worked as a clerk-cashier (more than once)
worked as a bottle clerk in a grocery store
worked as a "courtesy clerk"
been a parking lot checker
been a home-health care aide with elderly and disabled people
... and the list could go on much longer. If you haven't really lived it, it's difficult to understand. The indignities, the really bone-exhausting work - it's soul-numbing.
If we keep looking to education to right the social wrongs, we're really barking up the wrong tree. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we just keep barking at the wind.
What'd she discover? How impossible it is to survive on minimum wage. How many of her coworkers were homeless, hungry, and unhealthy (no health care). Minimum wage is nice if you just want to buy some CD's and you're 16. But if you have any type of adult responsibility, it just doesn't work.
In particular, I really appreciated her footnotes (great source material) and her "evaluation" essay at the end was extremely compelling (she even elicited some "wow's" from me). Exellent book. The problem with poverty in our country is not unemployment - it's underpaying. People work really really hard and suffer from it.
IT was on the New York Times Bestseller list for a long time, and that makes me chuckle - those readers aren't usually people who've ever done these types of jobs. Great for Ehrenreich to make visible the people who fuel forward our country - the underpaid.
I didn't need that convincing - and it made me realize why I'm so adamant about so many of my political beliefs. I've been those underpaid people. In addition to working at WIC, with migrant farm laborers, and with abused women and children, I've also been the poor underpaid person myself. I've:
delivered newspapers
weighed dump trucks
been a secretary (so many times)
worked at a gas station
been a waitress
worked in fast food (I hate cleaning grease traps)
been a hotel maid
been a housecleaner
worked at a hotel front desk
been a nanny (more than once)
been a clerk-typist
worked picking and cleaning produce
worked as a clerk-cashier (more than once)
worked as a bottle clerk in a grocery store
worked as a "courtesy clerk"
been a parking lot checker
been a home-health care aide with elderly and disabled people
... and the list could go on much longer. If you haven't really lived it, it's difficult to understand. The indignities, the really bone-exhausting work - it's soul-numbing.
If we keep looking to education to right the social wrongs, we're really barking up the wrong tree. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we just keep barking at the wind.
posted by NOLA at 7:53 PM
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