Rating: 
Summary: A plunge into low wage work -- one person's experience
Review: No subject matter seems to get people as excited blathering
nonsense as income inequality, low wage worker and "what's wrong",
i.e. the good old rich versus poor debate. This book is a good
book to read, in particular given the reviews you see above.
I'll explain why and then give my brief review.You know people have an agenda reviewing when they spend more
time trying to refute what the author says or paint the author's
experience in a bad light that talking of what the book is about.
So you'll have to read the book to see why some of the reviews
are actually quite biased and have an agenda (easy to spot
in this case). The book is about an experiment: can a person live on minimum-wage in America during the 1998-2000 economic boom
in a self-sustaining manner? The author, a writer in normal
life, decides to try the experiment and sets some reasonable
rules. She doesn't stick with them at every single moment, but one can
see the reasons for it (although it does distort the experiment
from a strictly scientific view). She finds, not surprisingly,
that if you are alone and try to have a place to yourself,
you can not survive on minimum-wage. The author could have
tried to share living space, but since she was also trying to see if all
the welfare-mothers being booted of welfare could survive,
and since many working folks have children, the fact that she
chose to have a place to herself would balance for the costs
she did not have to pay for: child health care, school and/or
daycare, and feeding the kid (and losing time taking care of
him/her and not sleeping). The book is well written. The language is clear and straight
forward. The author is a bit bitter and does complain a lot
about the structure of the situation she is in and does indulge
in ranting against the rich folks (and their houses) that she
has to clean in one episode. But the relevant thing this book
shows is how the whole problem is structural: almost any person,
regardless of who they are, will likely develop the attitude
she has given the way the social system is set up and
rules and attitudes that prevail, all of them "rational"
and easy to understand (sadly). I "enjoyed" reading this book: one sees low-wage service labor
all around, but does one know what it is really like? Where
do these folks live? What to they eat? Can they afford to live
alone? Or do they have to shack up with lots of other folks
in dirty places essentially in perptuity (yes)? It is a book that puts the "prosperity" of the 90s into
perspective, one that anyone not making the big bucks in the
internet stuff or wall street knows about first hand. Despite
solid economic growth, inequality in wealth and income has increased in the last 30 years, wages haven't budged much since 1970, and folks have to work much harder and for longer hours (and both spouses) just to have more or less the same level of living. Unless you're in the top 10% of the wealth bracket: then you've been doing just fine. This is a structural problem and
the book talks about it in a simple, everyday, nose to the
grindstone way. A good wake up call in case you weren't paying attention to
what is going on around you in the real world. If you have,
then you should still read this book to understand the day
to day problems faced by the working poor (or even lower middle class).
Rating:
Summary: Free To Starve
Review: Barbara Ehrenreich takes an inside look at what it's like to be one of the "working poor." She spent three months at three widely differing locations (Key West, Portland ME, and Minneapolis, MN) trying to make a go of it working for 6-7 dollars per hour. In spite of her advantages of good health, education, a car, and a fund to supply her with a deposit on a rental; she needed to work two jobs, seven days a week to barely survive. Two points that struck me over and over were 1) no matter where you go, there is NO affordable housing and 2) during possibly the most prosperous decade in the century, wages never increased on the lower end of the job scale (fast food, retail clerking, waitressing, house cleaning). Though at almost every Wendy's and Wal-Mart across the country, there are big "Help Wanted" signs, the wages are and remain at a flat six to seven dollars an hour. The author does an excellent job of describing her various job duties, many of them far more complex than you would ever dream, and humanizing her fellow workers and her interactions with them. The crunch for many people is the inability to put up a rental deposit plus the first month's rent for a place to live. The practice of the large chains and fast food industry of deferring the first week's pay for a week or ten days is frequently devastating. Advising people to cook up a big stew and make their own bread to cut food expenses is quite beside the point when they have nowhere to cook. Ms. Ehrenreich points out general health is poor because they rarely have health insurance and cannot afford to take any time off for illness. The work is usually strenuous, and bad backs and pulled muscles are endemic. The author has a built-in bias against people who do not clean their own houses. Her trials and tribulations as a housecleaner are sometimes unintentionally funny, but the grueling work and the indignities suffered are very real. Her solutions are breathtaking in scope and possibly too sweeping to have a chance of fulfillment. However, the ever-increasing disparity between "working poor" and "lower-middle class" must be addressed and acted upon soon before we have a huge transient peasant class always on the verge of homelessness. The next time you drive by a beautifully "gentrified" section of your town, ask yourself "where did the poor people go?" And keep in mind, that person "flipping burgers at Mickey D's" is working long, grueling hours on their feet for very little pay. "Nickel and Dimed" is highly readable. It may make you uncomfortable, but it is well worth the time.
Rating: 
Summary: 190 pages of whining
Review: If whining turns you on then this is the book for you. It's too bad because there are some salient points here, particularly concerning the economics of trying to make ends meet on entry level wages. Unfortunately the author would rather complain about supervision, pre-employment screening and consumers who have the audacity to use products or services provided by low wage workers.
Rating:
Summary: Elitest
Review: Although I give Ehrenreich credit for addressing an issue so often overlooked by most in this nation, I believe that Ehrenreich's approach was sincere, yet very elitest. Although she constantly brings up the fact that poverty is spreading across the U.S. population, it seems as though she's preaching to the choir, since most of us reading are part of that population of low-wage earners...
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't have a clue how to live on little money -- and nasty
Review: As someone who has lived on minimum wage jobs for at least a half a dozen years, I can vouch that this woman hasn't got a clue how to live on a small salary. First, she lived on her own for the entire experiment! I got the feeling that she felt like she had the "right" to have a place of her own. Nowhere in the world do people routinely have the luxury of an apartment (or even trailer) of their own. Why she didn't find a house with several other people and cut her rent in half (which would also solve her problem about how to come up with the deposit) is beyond me. Next, she ate fast food most of the time, which, according to her, cost her about $9 a day. If she had eaten bread and peanut butter instead, it would have cost her about 2 or 3 bucks (2 bucks for a cheap loaf of bread, which is about 1500 calories, and 50 cents or so for 500 calories worth of peanut butter, totalling 2000 calories, which is about average for a woman). Not that anyone would want to just eat peanut butter and bread, but you can find other foods that are just as cheap.
I guess I would have just chalked all that up to ignorance and enjoyed the book, except for her nasty attitude towards everyone who wasn't "below" her. The customers at her clothing store were fat pigs, the people whose house she cleaned were disgusting beasts who shed pubic hair, the managers were distrustful tyrants. The only people she could find any love for were those she found pitiful -- poor people, minorities, etc.
I also found this book repugnant because the horror she felt towards the lives of poor people seemed to mask a more authentic feeling of contempt. She seemed to feel that they had awful lives. However, they themselves didn't seem to agree. Was she right? Or were they right? It reminds me of Europeans who went to colonial areas and were shocked at those "poor natives" who didn't have the amenities of European life. It looks like compassion, but it is really contempt.
Rating: 
Summary: Self-Centered
Review: This book was not about how to make it by in America on an average wage, it was about how much the writer could inflate her ego. All the writer did was talk about herself and give social commentary (misguided at that). She goes into excrutiating detail about what she eats, what she packs, etc. Actually, in my viewpoint, Ms. Ehrenreich is making money on the backs of the poor with this book, exactly what she is disgusted about in the corporate world. I do not recommend this book unless you want to read a book that will completely agitate you.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and insightful!
Review: I found this book very interesting both in its topic and its approach. I now find myself more aware of employees and grateful for their help in the stores and establishments I go to that are similar to those depicted in the book.
Unlike some readers, I didn't take the book from a political standpoint, but rather from a human one. Nor did I choose to question the authenticity of her experiment.
This book simply made me more grateful for things I tend to take for granted and after I closed it, I found myself counting my blessings...
Rating: 
Summary: see it made it to the stage...
Review: I found myself sympathizing with the author's plight, but couldn't help forgetting she had the option to return to her comfortable world. The real poor don't. Still, we need all the light we can shine on this very real often overlooked problem. For more on this subject, I'd recommend Affluenza and a novel called Only in America for an in-depth look at underemployment and the toll it takes on both spirit and body. Whatever you think of this book, Ms. Ehrenreich deserves credit for addressing the subject matter period.
Rating: 
Summary: do not miss this book!
Review: Having read some of the other reviews, I've noticed just how many people are missing Barbara Ehrenreich's point. She does not claim to be a sociologist, psychologist or anything else apart from a writer! In my opinion, she did an admirable job of what is admittedly an "experiment." Of course it seems like she's "slumming it" but at least she tried it and has written a powerful and highly readable book to educate the rest of us who would otherwise have no idea about other segments of society. Even if only half of what she experienced was realistic, this should still serve to heighten our awareness of the plight of the MAJORITY of Americans. I am glad to see this is required reading in many colleges and universities and I hope it motivates people to take care of those living in our communities who are barely surviving on their "living wage." We may be the most powerful country in the world, but we are certainly not perfect. Bravo to Ehrenreich!
Rating:
Summary: I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS READ
Review: While this work does have it's faults, they are few in number.
The book draws attention to a very, very common and worrisome problem our country faces. The book is quite well written. Admittedly, the author is examining problems through eyes (hers) that cannot possibly, fully understand the plight her subjects face day after day, she nevertheless hits pretty close to the mark, all things considered. I do feel it would be good if she did some follow up at a later date. I would like to hear and read more. Thank you Ms Ehrenreich for the research and writing.
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