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

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

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Welcome to the nightmare that is the future
Review: ... A few of the people that Ehrenreich introduces us to in this book understand that they are mere cogs in an impersonal,inhuman machine but of course they haven't a clue what to do about it.And here is where the problem with the book lies:Ehrenreich is too soft and wishy washy and wants to play nice with the vampires who are actively seeking to suck the blood out of humanity. ... One very good point of the book is that it points out that Conservatives are most often the ones who preach the gospel of money as the be all and end all of life and civilization itself,then are amazed that our nation grows more selfish,nihilistic,ugly,disconnected and amoral. ...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Only Scratched the Surface ...
Review: Working in a low-wage retail job myself (in a bookstore, of all places), I was drawn to this book as it seemed it should fully describe my current frustration with Corporate America and thus, serve as a possible solution if only I could get enough of the right people to read it after me.

Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed. I was not pleased that Mrs. Ehrenreich made the assumption that all persons working these low paying positions are uneducated, unskilled, and just off of welfare. I happen to be educated (while I can't boast of the Ph.D. as she constantly did, I do have a BA), skilled, and with no desire to apply for welfare. But here I am, stuck in a dead-end job with all my attempts to get out of this rut continually ignored.

But the world she discovered when she left that Ph.D. at home is real. These people, myself among them, work harder than virtually all of those people who best relate their working life to the comic Dilbert. Not only do we work harder, but we work awful, inconsistant hours, weekends, and holidays. Name any holiday you like, I've worked every single one of them this year.

The concept behind this book is wonderful, but I don't feel it was executed in the best way possible. It should have been written by someone who actually lives in this world, not someone who visited it for a short time. And I can guarantee you there is at least one person working in any given bookstore who would be capable of writing such a book (myself included).

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Little Paranoid, But A Great Expose
Review: I don't agree with everything Ehrenreich says in this book--Maids are made to scrub floors on their hands and knees so they will be "anally accessible"? Oh please!--but nevertheless it is a true-to-life portrait of real life at the bottom of America's economic ladder. I especially enjoyed Ehrenreich's very strong anti-drug testing stance, though I disagree with her opinion that "living wage" laws are a solution to the problems she uncovers in this book. Even if you, like me, don't agree with all of Ehrenreich's politics, this book will open your eyes and encourage dialogue.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Interesting Subject, Great Writing, Humorous, But Flawed
Review: I thought that Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" (2001) was a very interesting and well written book.

She well describes the difficulty of being an unskilled laborer in contemporary America. While this is without question the wealthiest country to have ever existed in human history, that does not mean that everybody has an easy time making ends meet. The unskilled jobs like waitressing, house cleaning or working in retail are physically demanding, generally unstimulating intellectually, lacking perhaps in upward mobility and poorly paying. Ehrenreich takes us to the bottom of working American society and shows that it is sometimes ugly and often brutally difficult. As far as her descriptions of her jobs, her co-workers, and all of that, this book is 5 stars.

The problem is that Ehrenreich lacks a solid understanding of economic principles. She concludes that rents are too high and wages are too low and blames the latter on the greediness of employers, saying that the reason wages aren't rising is "employers resist wage increases with every trick they can think of and every ounce of strength they can summon" (pg 203). Her solution is the typical, thoughtless modern liberal solution: government intervention to raise wages and create more affordable housing. What she fails to realize is prices (such as wages and rents) are determined by the natural laws of reality, in this case usually by the law of supply and demand. Thus, if you raise wages, you cause unemployment because more labor is demanded at lower wages, less at higher. As costs get higher, marginal costs can exceed marginal benefits for employers and they are therefore not interested in hiring more workers. The same applies to housing: if you impose rent controls, this makes it unprofitable for certain landlords to operate their buildings and thus they will take their buildings off the market, decreasing supply and putting some people out on the streets. Raising wages will raise wages for some but cause unemployment for others; rent control will lower rents for some but cause others to be without housing. I think that anyone wanting to seriously and honestly deal with the problems of poverty has to at least recognize these laws of economics.

Because of her modern liberal beliefs, Ehrenreich overlooks factors beyond the greed of capitalists and employers that are partially responsible for poverty. One obvious, and overlooked, cause of poverty is taxes. Low wage workers in California pay almost 30% of their gross income in taxes (15% in federal, 6.2% social security, %1.45 medicare, .9% disability insurance, and I am not sure what CA state taxes are but I believe around 5%). This kind of huge expense makes the difference between being able to meet the rent and not being able to.

Another overlooked area is all the government regulations that increase the costs of doing business and thus increase the prices that business must charge in order to meet costs and make a profit. I am not an expert but I would bet that one of the reasons that housing is so expensive is the mass of government regulations boosting the cost of contstruction and operation of affordable homes and apartments. For instance, I often see articles in newspapers about home and condo builders being sued for construction defects and juries awarding huge damages to plaintiffs. This kind of high liability environment increases costs for builders and thus increases prices for homes and apartments.

I don't believe that the free market is a panacea that will create a capitalist utopia but modern liberal solutions are tired and ignorant and they don't help anyone. In fact, alot of Ehrenreich's fellow employees in her low wage jobs didn't appreciate her tirades about low wages and employer exploitation because they were happy to have the jobs they did, or at least would rather have the jobs than not, and her tirades threatened their well being.

In sum, Ehrenreich has written a clear, entertaining and sobering book and I enjoyed reading it very much. But her solutions are tired and ignorant and they don't take intellectual responsibility for dealing with the problem she cares so much about.

Greg Feirman...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Wake-up call
Review: A gritty, tell-it-like-it-is eye-opening look at how minimum wage workers struggle to get by in America. Bottom line: they don't. This should be required reading for every corporate CEO, state and federal lawmaker.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: nickels and doubts
Review: Although the book is well written and insightful, the wrap up is infinitely unsatisfying. If Ms. Ehrenreich really wants to help the plight of the working poor, perhaps she could come up with a fix for the problem, instead of pointing out all the flaws. If the Wal-Mart workers go on strike to get higher wages, Wal-Mart will need to charge more for their goods and the workers will spend the additional wages they earn on a higher cost of goods. Selah.

Thanks but no thanks. Lets think of some different solutions.

bkk

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Fear and Loathing in Key West, Portland and Minneapolis
Review: The author and the content of this book are one. The reader gets no inside look on the lives of America's working poor; they remain distinctly "they" while the author makes it painfully clear that she is not and never could be one of "them."

The author/content of this book may be summarized by five G's:

Gutless: Author fails to stand up for a Czech co-worker accused of stealing from a restaurant's dry-storage room, though she previously saw it as her personal "project" to befriend him and teach him English. Author leaves jobs without facing the management for closure. One job lasted almost a month; one she held an entire day. She quits work at a nursing home by calling in sick and writes "Sorry...all you sweet demented old ladies!" (p. 119). The author's cleaning service uniforms are dumped on Lori, a co-worker, for her to turn in and explain the author's sudden departure "however she wants" to their manager.

Guileful: Premise of the book.

Guilty: Author writes of using substances but seeks to cover it up and lies about it to land job

Goofy: Author calls friends' bird Budgie "instead of his more pretentious given name" (p. 123) and imagines the bird must be "quite pleased with its dominant position" once perched atop the author's sweatshirt hooded head (p. 130). ...

Garrulous: Blah, blah, blah.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Quick and entertaining insight into struggle of working poor
Review: Nickel and Dimed is worthwhile for the simple enjoyment of following the author and her colleague's day-to-day plight Estruggling to surviving on an average of $6.50/hour, and enduring the indignities of these low-wage positions. At the same time, the book is a quick and painless way to gain some insight and empathy for the current state of the working class poor in America.

The book suffers for the concluding 29-page evaluation spelling out the what the author sees as the implications of her experience, and her prescriptions to address the growing income inequality in America -- essentially creating more low-income housing, increasing wage transparency, and encouraging unionization. Such policy prescriptions take away from the power of the narrative, and I am afraid create a knee-jerk rejection of the whole book by the potential readers most in need of having more empathy for the working poor.

I live outside the United States, and it struck me as a tribute to the American economy, that it is taken for granted that an individual in Ms. Ehrenreich's situation should be able to arrive in an entirely new city with no social safety net of friends or family and survive. Such labor mobility helps America's GDP, though most American tax and fiscal policy has not favored it. Moreover, even when funds are available to build housing for single, low-income, transient workers such as Ms. Ehrenreich, you can be sure that the homeowners in areas where jobs are most plentiful, such as suburban Minneapolis, will fight like crazy to keep her out.

No matter your political viewpoint, I would highly recommend Nickel and Dimed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Well done!
Review: This book is a delight. Every other line is a chuckle. Ms. Ehrenreich effectively exposes the shrewd and manipulative ways in which management exploits low-income workers. She peels away the veneer of false authority that mid-managers depend on and she reveals them as the buffoons they often are. At the same time the workers are shown to be vulnerable, yet retaining the dignity they so justly deserve. A fun and enlightening read!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Well written eye-opener
Review: I run my own flower shop and although I think of myself as a fairly progressive employer, this book opened my eyes to some of the problems some of my employees face. Now I'm in the process of raising their wages and shopping around for a better benefits package. Things like this have been niggling in my mind for quite a while now, but this book brought things to a head.


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