<p>That's an interesting comment, because both my son and I had similar reactions to "Nickel & Dimed" -- not merely that the author was "slumming" ... but that she was doing a rather bad job of it as well. I couldn't figure out why she insisted on having her own room or apartment and a car. (As far as I recall, she had the car already - she didn't go so far as to try to buy one on her minimum wage income - but then she griped about the cost of gas). She seemed to be somewhat particular about where she would live, too. She also turned down a higher paying job offer in favor of a lower paying one at some point - I think because she didn't want to do the drug testing required for the higher paying job -- another instance where she drew lines based on her life experience that probably would not have been drawn by people who truly needed the money. So she had those upper middle class "own-ership" values that kind of stood in the way for her - and I think she missed the real point about how the have-nots function -- which involves a whole lot of sharing of lives and resources. </p>
<p>Anyway, for those who have lived lives more dependent at what they could earn at typical levels of pay, the book was something of a bore -- i.e., the author discovers the obvious and is surprised by it and has difficulty coping.</p>
<p>the lines she drew involved not going hungry and not being homeless, if that is the kind of sacrifices you are suggesting the "lower classes" make so that Joe Millionaire can get a new yacht,then it is immoral and unconscionable</p>
<p>I don't really have time to go back and read all the posts on this thread but I thought I'd share my experience so far in college with regards to the relationships btw students of opposing/differing socio-economic classes. </p>
<p>From what I've experienced, at Penn there tends to be mutual respect for everyone, especially on an intellectual level but socially the majority of people hang out with people in their same social class. This is primarily because there are various frats/sororities/secret societies that are exclusively for the ultra wealthy. </p>
<p>Personally I come from an upper middle class background. At Penn I have friends on both sides of the economic spectrum. I have a good friend whose parents died when she was 15 and she had to take care of the rest of her siblings. Her family was very poor but she managed to work a full time job and go to school. She now is on full finaid and works a job to support her siblings. However, the majority of my friends are upper middle class or ultra wealthy. I have many friends who take their jets on weekend to their houses in the Hamptons, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard or they fly to Gstaad for a few days of skiing. </p>
<p>So essentially there is definitely interaction and but just like in the real world people tend to socialize with people in their same economic classes. </p>
<p>With regards to networking most people at Penn, poor or wealthy, are always willing to network because they know that the people they are meeting, no matter how wealthy/poor they are, are going to be great contacts in the future. You never know when you're going to need them for a business, a job, or help.</p>
<p>I didn't have a problem with her making concessions- although I did think a few things were wierd like insisting on her laptop- her frequent trips "home" & her safety net was rather large- but I thought it was a good book and got some interesting discussions started.
Ive been on food stamps something I don't believe anyone in my book group has- one woman for instance who ( at least I) had felt sorry for because she didn't have a car- and took turns running her around flabergasted me when I found out that she didn't have money for a car because she was making double housepayments and just paid off her mortgage. Now I feel like I got snookered. I wouldn't have money for car ins or gas either if I was paying two mortgage payments.
Choices people make are really interesting- what they consider "necessary" and what is extra.
She could have for instance really lived the life of the working poor but I expect she is like many of us- once we have our wants met even some of them- how fast do they turn into must haves?</p>
<p>I grew up in a very socio-economically diverse community; roughly 20% white Catholic, 30% African American and 30% Jewish, reformed and orthodox and 20% white whatever. We claim a famous young rapper-songster as a hometown boy.</p>
<p>I went to a Cathlic primary school and I remember one question from a religion test: "What would you do if you met a Jewish man on the street?" The correct answer for the test was, of course, "Try to convert him."</p>
<p>Meanwhile, even as children, we knew it was a ridiculous question. No one tried to convert anyone--ever. But we knew what we were supposed to mark on tests and we did.</p>
<p>For me, meeting Jewish and African American students at university was not a surprise.</p>
<p>I'm Jewish and people were always trying to convert me as a kid (and a little as a grown-up). When I was 8, I visited my best friend's house for the first time. His mom amswered the door. She looked me over and I will never forget what she said. "I thought you people had horns".</p>
<p>cheers and dstark - as my aunt and I used to joke, because she used to get into trouble for running with a "mixed crowd" in the '30's and '40's (Jewish and Gentile), I AM a mixed crowd - half Jewish, half Catholic. I somehow lucked into a Catholic school which celebrated the continuum from Judaism to Christianity. So no attempting to convert Mom. </p>
<p>Where I grew up (Washington, DC) there were only these "class distinctions:" Black (called Negro or colored then) and White. Within "white," there was Jewish or not. End of story. Discrimination against blacks was everywhere; against Jews next most prevalent. I was shocked as an approx. 12-year old when a slightly older girl called me a "sh**ty Catholic." My first experience of that discrimination, which I heard more of once in college.</p>
<p>When I got to Boston, I was astonished at the micro-slicing of groups: Italians hating the Irish hating the Poles etc. etc.</p>
<p>This hatred is pretty amazing. I still hear nonsense (prejudice) from people that should know better. It's so ingrained, people don't even know what they are saying.</p>
<p>I thought Nickled & Dimed was a very good book, precisely because the author WAS a fish out of water and thus had the same shocks almost all upper middle class people would have had in her place. </p>
<p>She acknowledged her advantages in having a different life to return to, a car, and a ready security deposit. She also made it clear that most of her co-workers were doubled up with family members, living cooperatively, etc-- as calmom points out is the better way to cope.</p>
<p>I also think it's an excellent book. The point, I think, was not for her to 'experience" exactly what life is like for the working poor. That would hardly be possible when she did, in fact, have a safety net the whole time. the point was to examine the economics, and see if they add up. which they don't.</p>
<p>I used that book in a freshman English class last semester; almost all my students come from a financial background quite similar to that of the people Ehrenreich worked with. They got what she was doing. Most have worked jobs similar to the kinds she tries out, and they very much concured with her commentary.</p>
<p>OK, I'm lost, what's wrong with simple math? Are wealthy people so ignorant that they can't figure out that its darn near impossible to live on $5.15 an hour, which is the current federal minimum wage? Various government agencies maintain statistics and charts on that sort of thing.
[quote]
The 2004 poverty level for a family of three was an annual income of $15,670. The annual income for full-time, minimum wage employment is $10,712. According to the U.S. Census Bureaus September 2003 Population Survey, 12.1% of the countrys population lives in poverty.
<p>I don't have any quarrel with the writing of the book -- I just think it's rather sad that it needs to be written - since all it does is give a rather shallow overview of what life is like for a significant percentage of Americans. The book author had it easy - she only had herself to take care of - she should see what life is like for a single mom with a couple of kids.</p>
<p>My reaction to <em>Nickel and Dimed</em> was that she had done an incomplete job of it. I would have liked her to actually do some reporting, to go back and interview her bosses, ask them why they paid so little and made working conditions so poor. Where was the interview with the WalMart CEO where he explained why he couldn't pay a living wage? (Costco manages to pay nearly twice as much and still compete. They even provide health insurance.)</p>
<p>The reason it needed to be written is that it is too easy to overlook the visceral reality of the working poor. </p>
<p>You eat breakfast at Denny's or shop at Walmart and everyone is clean, presentable, smiling. In uniform, it is easy for these people to be corporate "wallpaper," not noticable, individual human beings. Seeing them only in this setting, you are not compelled to consider the circumstances of their lives when they leave the workplace. (In fact, you often get propoganda to the contrary; how great Walmart is to bring jobs, etc.) </p>
<p>In our country, it is too easy to think everyone who is not homeless is "making it," or everyone who is employed is not homeless. I thought the author did a great job of portraying the precariousness of her coworkers' lives-- a few sick days away from eviction, a pair of shoes away from not having dinner this week.</p>
<p>Just because something is true or obvious does not mean it is being properly noticed or considered by most of us. I consider myself a pretty aware person. I live in a very racially and economically diverse community; having worked at a local foodbank, I am very aware that there are working people who can't buy groceries in the latter part of their pay period.</p>
<p>Still, this book taught me a lot. The author is a very articulate spokesperson for the grinding physical exhaustion, the mind-numbing sameness of the tasks, and the squalor of the available housing. Knowing all of this exists is not the same as paying appropriate attention to it. </p>
<p>Finally, reading the book brings home that the plight of the working poor has little to do with intelligence. This brilliant, resourceful woman was just as screwed as everyone else.</p>
<p>I found Nickel and Dimed valuable as a reality check for those of us whose only exposure to minimum-wage dead-end jobs was as teen-agers, knowing that such a life was only a way-station on the way to bigger and better things.</p>
<p>However, I found the author's tone off-putting in many regards and perhaps others did, also, consciously or unconsciously. To me, she held herself "above" the employers, some of whom may have had struggles of their own, and gave herself credit for being one with the struggling workers, which I don't think she really was.</p>
<p>A book I have not yet read, but which a review indicated was a better exploration of what Erenreich was trying to do is:
[quote] The American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and the Nations Drive to End Welfare, Jason DeParle. While campaigning for president in 1992, Bill Clinton vowed to "end welfare as we know it"; four years later, the much publicized slogan evolved into a law that sent nine million women and children off the rolls. New York Times reporter DeParle takes an eye-opening look at the ... lives of three black women affected by it,.... DeParle accompanies the women on trips to the dentist, on visits to loved ones in jail, to job-training workshops and on travels to Mississippi. He offers few solutions for breaking the cycle of poverty and dependency in America, but DeParle's large-scale conclusion is that moving poor women into the workforce contributed to declines in crime, teen pregnancy and crack use.
<p>" Are wealthy people so ignorant that they can't figure out that its darn near impossible to live on $5.15 an hour, which is the current federal minimum wage?"</p>
<p>Well, I have to think so, since any time the question of raising the minimum wage comes up. or heaven forbid, the concept of a living wage, so many of them (of us) squawk.</p>
<p>And how many people refuse to shop at walmart? Maybe reading this will shove into their faces, as abstract statistics cannot, how enjoying those low prices is dependent on someone else's suffering?</p>
<p>true garland- didn't one of the moms just comment that one of her best friends from college didn't find spending $20,000 on a watch unusual?
I actually don't shop at walmart- not hard- there are zero walmarts in Seattle
I also shop at a grocery store which actually boycotts companies whose human rights practices conflict with the objective of the store.</p>
<p>"" Are wealthy people so ignorant that they can't figure out that its darn near impossible to live on $5.15 an hour, which is the current federal minimum wage?"</p>
<p>Well, I have to think so, since any time the question of raising the minimum wage comes up. or heaven forbid, the concept of a living wage, so many of them (of us) squawk.."</p>
<p>Why can't we just accept it for what it is, mean-spirited greed, sometimes dressed up with a thin covering of trickle down? ;)</p>
<p>(That's one of the reasons why the mixing of social classes at school is so urgent, and why the experience - academic and otherwise - suffers without it - for everyone! But when you don't have it, you don't know what you're missing.)</p>
<p>Actually, I doubt that the people who would learn from reading the book are actually reading it. And I think it is callousness rather than ignorance that leads well-to-do people to oppose the idea of a living wage -- given the fact that most of them probably would struggle to live on a perfectly adequate income, simply to maintain aspects of lifestyle they deem essential. After all, Barbara Ehrenreich (the book author) made her situation more difficult by some preconceived ideas of what was necessary -- to me the most glaring was her decision to look for a single apartment rather than start with shared rental listings. I can't imagine any actual lower-income person who wouldn't start the housing search with shared-rental listings. Not that it makes it easier to get by on minimum wage, but at least it frees up dollars to be spent on food or transportion rather than a room that is going to be empty half the time while you are at work. Obviously that may not be an option for an adult trying to raise a family - but a private apartment is a luxury for other single adults, and outside of subsidized or slum area housing, I don't think you will find many minimum wage earners even trying that route.</p>
<p>"Why can't we just accept it for what it is, mean-spirited greed, sometimes dressed up with trickle down?"</p>
<p>I persist in thinking that, faced with the facts, some people will change. It's too depressing, otherwise.</p>
<p>BTW, utterly fantastic book which touches on the ability to empathize with people different from most of us, and act on this empathy--Mountains
Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder.</p>
<p>Will be discussing this with many of the same students I did Nickeled and Dimed with--many of whom come from the same poor and cheated cultures that the subject of the book , the physician Paul Farmer, deals with--Haiti, Peru, Russia, Cuba, etc. Should be an interesting semester.</p>
<p>I wish all students from comfortable backgrounds could spend some time with my students; I think everyone could learn a lot.</p>