Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Barbara Ehrenreich Date: 01 May, 2002   —   $10.40   —   Book product page Rating:

I had a lot of time to read while waiting in doctor's offices, pharmacies and the emergency room over the last week, and Erhenreich's book gave me a lot to think about while totaling up the cost of the blood clot that bushwhacked me. The medication alone cost almost $3,000 and I don't even want to think what the ultrasound, doctors and emergency room visits cost. Thank God I have medical insurance; more than 45 million Americans don't.

Ehrenreich wanted to find out what it's like for the tens of millions of Americans who try to support a family working as unskilled labor. She took jobs as a waitress, a hotel cleaning lady, at a maid service and at Wal-Mart. It turned out she couldn't even feed, clothe, and shelter herself, much less a family. All I could think of while reading the book was that, had she found herself blindsided by a potentially fatal medical condition, she probably would have just died. There's no way anyone making $7-$8 an hour can afford the doctors and treatments.

When this book was written in 2000, America was still in a period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity. Now that millions of middle-class Americans have fallen below the poverty line every year since then, this book is even more relevant and important. If a person can't support themselves -- much less a family -- in a time of almost total employment, there certainly not able to do it now. The myth that poor people are poor because they're lazy and spend frivolously is a myth. They're poor because the full-time jobs they're qualified for (when they can find them) don't pay a living wage.

Some fun facts:

• The poverty rate is calculated by taking the bare bones cost of food for a family, and multiplying it by three. But food is fairly inflation proof where the cost of housing is anything but. Try calculating your minimum food expenditures for a month, then double that number and see what kind of housing you can afford. My guess is you'd be living in a cardboard box. And remember, this is working a full-time job; not sitting on your ass collecting welfare.


• In inflation adjusted dollars, the bottom 10% of workers are making about 90% of what they were making in 1970. The top 10% are making about 110%. The income gap is growing and it's directly related to the decline of organized labor.

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" ...neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high.

Someday, of course ...they are bound to tire of getting so little in return and to demand to be paid what they're worth. There'll be a lot of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption. But the sky will not fall, and we will be better off for it in the end.