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WAA, WAAAA, WAAAAAAA...boo hoooooWhat was the publisher thinking? Letting a biology Ph.d write an economics book. There are so many economic inaccuracies in this book they are too numerous to mention. The most important theory she mangles is that she thinks wages she should be raised even if there are enough employees to hire at piss-poor wages. She believes that (she eludes to it, but never makes the point clearly) it is the employers responsibility to provide enough wage to make sure everyone
The two sentence summary of this book is: PhD and respected writer decides to find out how the other two-thirds live. To this end she goes undercover as an unskilled laborer at three minimum wage jobs (waitress, Wal-mart employee and Merry-Maid) each in a different city, each for one month.Things I liked:The premise. Things I hated:1. Her shocked tone of discovery. Newsflash! Living on minimum wage is hard/nigh on impossible! Educated people have it pretty easy comparatively! Entry level minimum...
Okay, I suddenly got a Like on my non-review of this book, so I'm going to say a few words about it, which I've thought off and on for a while.I've seen very put-downish reviews here on GR about the book, and more so about the author.It's held that Ehrenreich was a fake, had no idea what the working poor face, was just trying to make a buck off them, the book totally discredited because she had money and could just walk away when she was finished, or if she got in trouble, yada yada. This sort o...
Ehrenreich, a woman who has a Ph.D., goes "undercover" working low-paying jobs to see if one can earn a living with such work in America.One can't.She tries to make ends meet on the following jobs: waitressing, hotel housekeeping, Maid Service, nursing-home attendant, and Wal-Mart employee, often working two jobs at a time.This shocking exposé reveals the horrific conditions that the "working poor" toil under. Well, at least they're shocking to someone who's never had to struggle to make ends me...
I wanted to hate this book. I bought it with the intention of hating it. Overeducated liberal writer slumming it on minimum wage, to prove what? That minimum wage is not livable? Well who ever said it was? And looking at the reviews it’s clear this book is a Rorschach test for poverty, anyone poor enough to relate to the indignities she describes will invariable feel some resentment at the minimum wage martyr act, flagellating herself with your everyday life. And how easy it was for me especiall...
Here's a down and dirty assessment of Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich:First the positive:- Interesting premise: writer decides to try to live on the wages that unskilled workers (waitresses, home/hotel cleaners, department store [Walmart, for instance] clerks) earn to see if she can do it and see if she learns anything in the process.- She exposes some very unethical (even illegal) employer practices such as withholding a worker’s first paycheck until the second pay period.- She notes so...
I wanted to like this book. I thought the premise was fantastic. But overall, as someone who actually has lived on minimum wage (even supporting a child on minimum wage back when minimum wage was scary low), this book comes up short in several ways.First of all, Barbara Ehrenreich has a horribly privileged, ivory tower view of how poor people must live. While she does talk to some people who are scraping by, she assumes the majority of poor people make the same crummy decisions as the few to who...
“When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that ot...
A classic now in the field, and I've long used an excerpt from this in my Intro. Sociology reader for our week on Poverty in the U.S. Still, I remind students that this is the only author we read that doesn't have the "street cred" of a "real" sociologist, some "union card" (Ph.D., mostly) as a behavioral or social scientist, or social theorist or philosopher of some sort, as Ehrenreich is a...gasp....journalist! (I'm reminded of perhaps my own bias about this as I was critical of the layperson
Dear Barbara Ehrenreich, How do I resent thee? Let me count the ways:1. You are a wealthy, highly educated person who went on a half-assed, anthropological slumming vacation.2. When said vacation was over, you told your coworkers: "Surprise! I'm not a poor person after all! I'm going back now to my comfortable life!"...and then you were surprised that those coworkers were mostly worried about the fact that they'd have to work the next shift with one less person.3. You also were surprised that th...
As someone who grew up as part of the "working poor," I have had all of these kinds of jobs myself at one time or another. Most of my family members still do. So for me, Nickel and Dimed was kind of a big "DUH." I mean, seriously, does any of this come as a surprise to anyone? Did anyone ever really think it was easy to make ends meet off of a low/minimum wage job? It's a preposterous idea.In my opinion, Ehrenreich's writing has a patronizing undertone, and seeks to make the reader feel pity for...
I'm going to step on some toes here and I apologize if I do. I AM one of the working poor that she talks about here and I DO believe in pulling myself up and making a better life for myself. But what I want to know is this. Unless you have been where I am, how can you comment? How can you also call her a bleeding heart? Is this a country for the haves only? And the have nots just have not? uhh uhh, I just don't understand. We got an election coming up and some folks are fussing about this countr...
Welfare reform in the mid-1990s was meant to get people off the welfare rolls and into the workforce. As the U.S. had a strong economy at the time, and jobs were plentiful, this was supposed to work out pretty well all around. The problem was that most 'unskilled jobs' paid minimum wage (which was six to seven dollars/hour at the time) and this just wasn't enough to support a parent and child - much less a larger family. In 1998 Barbara Ehrenreich - a political activist and writer - decided to t...
So, the author got paid to wait tables in Florida, clean homes in Maine, and organize clothes at Wal-Mart in Minnesota. All right, all of that is completely believable. What's difficult to comprehend is that she also gets paid to write books.She makes a lot of great points, but the style she does it with is totally condescending. She's so pleased with her own concept that she cannot help but remind readers at least every ten or so pages that she's actually very highly educated. "You might think
(warning, a nerve has been touched!)I have experience working with and researching programs that aid the poor and working poor. I hated this book. The only role it could play is as a weak talking piece for starting up serious discussion about the struggles and needs of the poor.Barbara Ehrenreich may have stepped outside her comfort zone and into the world of the working poor, but she did it with an educated background, with money "just in case", with a pompous attitude, and with the requirement...
I read this in honor of Labor Day."Nickel and Dimed" has been on my radar for years. It's considered a modern classic in several disciplines, including journalism, sociology and economics. Starting in 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich spent several months working low-wage jobs in different cities around the United States in an attempt to experience what it was like to be one of America's working poor. She wondered how anyone could possibly live on wages available to the unskilled, which at the time was a...
Very quick explanation of the premise of this one: a woman, who is a writer/journalist, is talking to her publisher about what she wants to write about next and says, “someone ought to write a book about how hard it is to get by on the minimum wage in America.” The publisher says, “Okey-dokey (the book is set in the US so I’m trying to give you a feeling of verisimilitude) you’ve hired.” (High fives all around)Before I started this book I really worried. I mean, I’m a bit of a worrier anyway – b...
I think the entire point of this book was to 'prove' that minimum wage jobs by their very nature and pay scale CANNOT support people, even people with all the advantages she had (and none of the additional disadvantages the poor often have.)I don't see this book as even trying to be any kind of an exhaustive look at all the difficulties facing those truly living in poverty and attempting to get by.What I do see it as is an attempt to prove to middle-income Americans that even with all the benefi...
When this book came out, I was working in a busy bookstore in a fairly small town. We had a stack of them at the counter, and I read bits on my breaks. While I was glad to see a popular book addressing the problems of the working poor, I couldn't help but feel like she'd taken a vacation in my life and then made a bunch of money writing a book about it, something she could only have achieved because she had already been in a position of privilege. Your average house cleaner, lacking an advanced
If you're looking for socialist propaganda - full of rhetorical tricks and short on evidence, then this is the book for you. If, however, you're hoping for an unbiased treatment of the life of the poor, a reasonable economic/policy analysis of poverty, or any sort of insight into American culture, then this book will be profoundly disappointing. There are some interesting issues covered, such as wage inequalities and the plight of the urban poor, but that's really all I can say in its favor. The...