Nickel and Dimed
on (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich

7/28/2002

Barbara Ehrenreich is a writer and journalist. She considers her economic and social status in the United States as middle class. In the late 1990's she took on a new challenge. She spent a month each in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota trying to get by on positions a woman with no work history or special skills could obtain. After these trials, she wrote an eye-opening book.

She took different jobs of waitressing, house cleaning, and department store sale associates at wages of $7 an hour or less. She looked for affordable housing and food that she could take on those wages. She gave herself the basic rules someone taken out of the welfare system would have. She found that on the short term she could almost make it. She did not see how anyone could survive like that for more than a few months.

Ehrenreich freely admits she did not have the full experience of a person stuck in a low paying job. Yet she experienced the low wages, the lack of respect by both the employer and the customer, the typical food available, and housing that would be considered substandard in any television show - fictional or reality based -produced in this country. She had access to a car, which many of these people do not.

If you like horror stories, read this book. If you want to read about the human condition of people in the USA, read this book. If you want to read about poverty, read this book. If you want to remain sealed off in your affluent bubble, ignore this book. It grates on the emotions and the soul. Ehrenreich does not seek pity, or write in a way to elicit it for the people she met.

Still, I have often wondered how people with wages lower than mine managed to get by why I so often just barely make it. Now I have a better understanding. They share residences with others. They eat cheap food or often no food. They will grab any free offerings their company may offer in lieu of higher wages. They go without decent healthcare or other benefits. They'll work more than one job at a time.

This is well written in a narrative style. It reads smoothly like fiction. Unfortunately, it isn't fiction, but a truth. Hopefully enough people will read this to help bring the problem to larger notice and, perhaps, instigate some changes. Meanwhile, I'll make sure I leave appropriate tips, replace items I do not purchase to the shelves in stores, and try not to whine too much when my bills seem to high. At least I can pay them.......

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