Thoughts:
- A lot of people complain about how this book is blatantly Marxist; I don't think I saw it as such, but she definitely went into her experiment with an agenda to prove rather than being objective. Persuasive and probably a bit biased, but not "blatant liberal propaganda" that many FoxNewists would call it, imo.
- G damn, this chick is annoying. While reading through a few negative reviews of the book, I saw numerous people recount their disgust at her elitist attitude towards the working poor (side note: kinda reminded me of John Perkins' in Confessions of an Economic Hitman with his "I know I did all these bad things but I'm really really sorry! Really!"). Though I did think it was slightly annoying the majority of the time, I usually didn't find it to be that big of a deal -- rich white lady joins the poor? Yea, she's gonna have some issues.
- During the course of her experiment, Ehrenreich refused public transportation (she kept a car and paid for gas, etc) and chose to not split the cost of a housing situation with a roommate. The latter could be seen as a downside of the experiment itself; she stayed in 3 separate locations, each for only a month -- pretty hard to find a roommate for only a month, eh? In times when she couldn't find affordable housing with a kitchenette, she ate fast food. As far as I can remember, she didn't use food stamps.
But a lot of people cited these things in their critiques. They argued that if she had taken those short-cuts in her experiment, as millions of Americans do, she would've been just fine. But I'm wondering about this point -- what should WE consider the minimal living conditions one should be able to procure with a full-time job? If I have a minimum wage job as my sole source of income, do I have the right to expect housing by myself? A car? Groceries? Health insurance? At which point do we have people step in and say "no, these jobs pay too little," or "wth, why don't these employees get better jobs?".
- That was definitely one point that really confused me -- why DIDN'T those people get better jobs? Surely Wal-Mart and such places can't be the only locations for employment, even if you only have an HS diploma -- I've definitely applied to jobs that require no more than that. So what's the deal? There were a number of instances where it was an older mother who was entering the job force later in life because her husband was no longer able to get enough income. Other times, people were limited by lack of transportation
- I'd like to know how many people working minimum wage jobs are doing as a means of their entire income. I don't think I had seen this stat anywhere in the book, but I'd be interested in the numbers, especially considering a lot of the claims she makes in the Evaluation segment of the book (specifically, 60% of the workforce in America makes under $30,000 year -- how many of those are students living at home? or senior citizens supplementing their social security/pensions?). I'd be curious to know.
- I think one of the things that struck me the most was how it seemed like the poor were just barely living on the edge. There was this strong sense of desperation throughout the book, like these people were a medical emergency away from lifelong debt. Or even worse, a sick day away from lacking home food for the week. I am now officially terrified of poverty. Awesome.
Highlights:
"There seems to be a vicious cycle at work here, making ours not just an economy, but culture of extreme inequality."
"It is common, among the nonpoor, to think of poverty as a sustainable condition -- austere, perhaps, but they get by somehow, don't they? They are "always with us." What is harder for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress: The lunch that consists of Doritos or hot dog rolls, leading to faintness before the end of the shift. The "home" that is also a car or a van. The illness or injurty that must be "worked through," with gritted teeth, because there's no sick pay or health insurance and the loss of one day's pay will mean no groceries for the next. These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle, even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-level punishment. They are, by almost any standard of subsistence, emergency situtions. And that is how we should see the poverty of so many millions of low-wage Americans -- as a state of emergency."
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