Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. Undercover examination of life on minimum wage in America.
There is an assumption that it is always more desirable for a person, specifically a woman, to be working rather than collecting welfare. Ehrenreich explores what work options would be for a middle aged woman without significant education or work history. She takes work as a waitress, house cleaner, hotel maid and WalMart employee to examine what it might be like for a woman kicked off the welfare rolls.
She details what the experience of living on minimal earnings is like for her. It’s an entertaining read with many funny and cringe-worthy anecdotes. The book is obviously designed to appeal to the conscience of the more comfortably off in American society. I did feel moved by the plight of the author’s co-workers. I also felt angry at Ehrenreich. She was playacting at other people’s lives and while she heavily caveats her experiment, her privileged position is still achingly obvious in her narrative.
All that Ehrenreich experiences and more can be illustrated through traditional academic investigation; interviews, statistics and case studies of people trying to get by in difficult financial circumstances. Her “under cover” work is a luxury , a sop to her conscience, and a hook to get people to be more interested in reading the book. Can the upper class white woman survive a life we associate with lower class women? This false suspense just plays into the basic assumption that there are concrete differences between the economic classes of people besides their available capital. There is an us and a them and she is venturing into forbidden territory. The truth is that Ehrenreich is free to leave at any point. She is never truly desperate or in real need, everything that happens to her she does to herself. She is not truly dealing with the full gamut of conditions that push a person into the position of needing to accept a pittance of a salary for back breaking work to keep body and soul together.
The conclusion of the book: it’s tough to get by on minimum wage. It’s really, really tough. There is not enough money for lodging and food and clothing much less emergency medical expenses and a car. What it really comes down to and what Ehrenreich misses in her drive to demonize bosses and managers and the “system” is that people survive. All of the people she works with are surviving. They aren’t making money and they aren’t saving but they are getting by. This is what we are programmed to do, no matter how bad life gets you just have to keep going. She makes the people she meets out to be victims -which they are- but they also have agency. They are keeping going.. Rather than an argument in favor of the utility of welfare this book reads more like an argument for the establishment of a true living wage.
This book is a quick read. It is engagingly written and informative. If you ever feel like your life is tough, give it a read. Either your life is way better than you think or you could be in this book.
-fh