Rating: 
Summary: Working poorly
Review: A glance at the back dust cover is not promising. Yet Shipler's book deserves a read. The profiles are well written, informative, varied, exhaustive, complex and illustrative. Compassion for the subjects is elicited and deserved. Some subjects struggle and do get by, if barely, due more to informal charity and kinship than by government (anti-)poverty programs. Their stories are especially noteworthy. Shipler's meticulous candor supplants Ehrenreich's solipsistic book, "Nickled and dimed in America." Praised for its vicarious, first-hand account of other people's poverty, "Dimed" had no basis for useful insight. The life of poverty is no game, no short-term social experiment. Not pretending to be poor, Shipler is much more thorough; his first-hand journalistic research covers years, not months. He is objective and not judgmental yet his compassion shines through his words.Shipler uses Churchill's description of democracy as the worst form of government to explain why capitalism is the worst form of economic policy - except when compared to all others that have been tried from time to time. A wise analogy. Yet the final analysis and public policy recommendations are difficult to make or to decipher. Shipler acknowledges that the major cause of poverty can be attributed to a single source: bad personal choices. Of course, no one chooses to be poor (some journalists excepted), but people repeatedly make independent, self-serving or selfish, short-sighted, unfortunate choices, including walking away from the mother or father of their children, from their families, from educational opportunities, from their religious values, and from disciplined work habits. And they walk all too easily into a trap: teenage pregnancy, drug and domestic abuse, and endless hours in front of the television. As Shipler notes, what most poor Americans seem to have in common is high tv cable bills. Too often, government fails in its efforts to help. Despite the excessively complicated-to-claim earned income tax credit, Uncle Sam still takes too much of poor people's income in regressive, work-discouraging social security taxes and from employers by raising the cost to find, train, retain, and motivate ill-educated workers. And then the government tempts the poor with slickly marketed Ponzi schemes in the form of state lotteries, realizing the addictive nature of these rip offs that prey upon the poor. And state schools expend $10,000, even $12,000, per pupil and produce illiterates with no job skills. Even health care is a form of governmental plague. Prevention earns little or no attention or funding from bureaucrats while cures and caring for the horrible consequences of poor nutritional and lifestyle habits are prohibitively expensive when it is available (more often than critics suggest), and leaving health care providers with exhorbitant malpractice insurance whose elimination alone could pay for health care for the poor. There are too many social and governmental barriers to and disincentives for making good choices and taking personal responsibility. In Shipler's rich "Working poor," you learn a lot about the poor. You just don't learn how to help reduce poverty.
Rating: 
Summary: Shows the irony of the educational industrial complex
Review: Compelling work hits its highest marks in telling the story of the persons duped into lifetime student loan debt for useless college paperwork. This is something the mainstream media will not cover. Instead of wealth redistribution solutions, though, simple equity under the law as to bankruptcy access would be better. Why do the Donald Trumps of the world, large corporations, and the ruling elite get access to ancient bankruptcy traditions while the lower classes with student loan debt get compunded interest, collection and attorney fees, social security attachments, wage attachments, license revocation, debtor exams, and fines on top of fines for the rest of their miserable lives? Early in our nation's history, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said bankruptcy was to "to relieve unfortunate and honest debtors from perpetual bondage to their creditors... One of the first duties of legislation, while it provides amply for the sacred obligation of contracts, and the remedies to enforce them, certainly is, pari passu, to relieve the unfortunate and meritorious debtor from a slavery of mind and body, which cuts him off from a fair enjoyment of the common benefits of society, and robs his family of the fruits of his labour, and the benefits of his paternal superintendence."
Rating:
Summary: A Beacon of Hope for the Voiceless Masses. 10 Stars!
Review: David K. Shipler did an outstanding job bringing the harsh and saddening reality of what the lives are like for the 'working poor' in America. Shipler makes wonderful recommendations for higher wages so people can actually survive, redistribution of funds for schools so all children have the chance for receiving the education they deserve, as well as stating the position of responsibility on society as a whole to work together for the common good of all.
This book brings a brutal awakening for anyone who believes in the 'American Dream' as it so clearly shows that this land is all too filled with people turning the other way when someone is in need.
I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who is in a position to make positive and lasting change in society, as well as for those who are in a better position, so you can see if there is a difference you can make.
This book brings out the truth with vital recommendations for direly needed changes, which is why I recommend it as a must read for all.
Barbara Rose, author of 'If God Was Like Man' and 'Individual Power'
Rating:
Summary: The American Nightmare
Review: David Shipler takes up where Barbara Ehrenreich left off in Nickel and Dimed. Where Ehrenreich examined the working poor with a microscope, Shipler uses a wide-angle lens.
Shipler interviews the working poor, poor people who are out of work, employers, case workers, and teachers of poor children. So the title is a little misleading, in that this book takes on American poverty, not just those who are working.
While Ehrenreich got involved personally by becoming one of the working poor, Shipler observes and sympathizes. His sympathy is understandable, but at times I wondered just how much it was affecting his journalistic objectivity. Many times he relates events, apparently told to him by the people he interviewed. He doesn't qualify these stories in any way and they are told as if he was telling them first hand. His chapter on Leary Brock, an inner city woman who eventually became successful, overcoming great odds, tells her story from the time she was in high school to her fiftieth birthday. Shipler narrates, complete with quotations, as if he were there, without notes or sources. Was he there?
In any case, these are compelling stories, about migrant fruit pickers living in squalor, about malnourished infants whose parents don't know how to care for them, about teachers who keep a supply of granola bars on hand to feed hungry children so they will be able to concentrate on the lesson, about a maze-like system that keeps people in poverty from getting the tools they need to break out.
The Working Poor is a passionate book that sees democracy as the solution to poverty. Those who want the system to change to meet their needs will have to vote, he says, and vote in large enough numbers so that legislators will have to listen to them. Maybe that will work, but even Shipler expresses doubts, as he acknowledges that people tend to vote their aspirations rather than their complaints.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Look at Poverty in America
Review: David Shipler's Working Poor is an excellent companion read to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed and offers a searing look at poverty in America.
Shipler's key contribution is to point out that overcoming poverty requires both luck and discipline. Bad breaks or poor luck managed by middle-class families with relative ease pose far greater obstacles for the poor. Take a mundane example-- a broken car. The middle-income family would get a tow to a repair shop and lease a new vehicle until the first was fixed. Inconvenient, but hardly disastrous. The same episode could force a poor family over the edge-- an inability to fix the car combined with the possibility of inadequate alternative transportation, public or otherwise, could lead to job loss and additional economic hardship.
The addition of family instability and hard-to-access or inadequate public services compound the difficulties faced daily by poor Americans.
Does individual responsibility affect the ability to defeat poverty? Shipler answers with a resounding yes, but reminds us that poverty imposes challenges of which wealthier Americans are unaware. Read this excellent book to gain additional insight and compassion.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book and then share it with everyone you know
Review: I want to send a copy of this book to President Bush every day until he reads it and gives a report on his thoughts. Either that or I could read it over a bullhorn daily at the White House.
David Shipler nailed the plight of the poor in American on the head, and the chapters on migrant workers make you ashamed for pinching pennies on produce. It makes you wonder that if there was a photo of the suffering farm workers posted above the carrots or celery, would people still be willing to skimp on price? We all pass the buck, but Shipler shows that we all take responsibility for the suffering of the people in these pages.
As someone who only graduated college a few years back and worked menial jobs to pay bills, eat and pay rent, I KNOW the struggle these people go through to exist on a daily basis. Because I got an expensive education (for which I owe tens of thousands of dollars) I only temporarily experienced the poverty they're stuck in, but I understand what they're going through. I wish every American was forced to walk in their shoes and get this perspective at some point in their lives.
The sad fact is that in today's America, unless you have family members to borrow money from or to help you out when you're down, you are taken advantage of by the system. It's criminal that the people who have the least money pay the most in fees and interest rates to banks for abstract services. The banks get money for nothing, literally. Then these banks "invest" money in political campaigns so that our lawmakers make it easier for them and harder for working Americans to hold onto their money.
What is the answer to this? Campaign Finance Reform! When politicians have to answer to the PEOPLE rather than corporations, they will change their tunes.
Please read this book and tell everyone you know to read it as well, it will change your view of capitalism and if you have an ounce of conscience, it will put you to shame.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Works
Review: In the land of the American Dream, it can be easy to turn a calloused heart to the plight of the poverty-stricken. After all they aren't victims...the American Dream is that people can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and with enough gumption and verve the plight of poverty can easily be broken if there is enough desire.
Shipler's book proves that is not the case. By getting into the fabric of the lives of the working poor who have given the American Dream a shot but found that dream has failed them, Shipler gives us an insider's eye to the dynamic multi-facted issues behind poverty. To break the cycle often-times requires that the planets are aligned, life must be just so, Murphy's Law needs to be suspended for a time. Shipler shows that the minimum wage is not a livable wage. Payday loans and tax return companies are wolves in wolves clothing. They take advantage of the people who can least afford to be taken advantage of...those that are in financial crisis to begin with.
Shipler, who had such success telling the personal side of things in "The Arab and the Jew," is in good form taking on the issue of poverty in "The Working Poor." As a measure of how a society is to be judges, one should look at how the poor and how children are treated. When we are viewed in history's eye, I wonder how we will be judged.
We can hear the message of David Shipler in this book and listen and listen hard. If so, we will be called to act.
--MMW
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, realistic and balanced portrayal of our society
Review: Rivetting! It's hard to put the book down.
Shipler describes the families I work with, on a daily basis, to the tee and his analysis of macro systems is on the mark.
"Working Poor" IS an oxymoron.
In a country of such affluence, consumer consumption, corporate & individual greed, mean-spiritedness, and a general decline of a belief in the public good for all citizens...what "should" not exist (Working Poor) is a sad reality and unfortunate legacy of our times.
Rating:
Summary: We need much more of this!
Review: Shipler only touches on the real problems with workers in America but does perform a valuable service in doing so.
Take someone working at a major retail chain,say a Home Depot or Walmart.. What is it like working for such a firm?
For one thing, longevity in employee base is not preferred. Turnover needs to be high to keep wages low, so enormous pressure is brought in the form of 'metrics','quality', 'customer management' and whatever politically correct term is used. Workers are continually threatened with the loss of their job 'just around the corner' as sales and revenue ALWAYS falls short of the mark.Many times large firms such as these exploit desperate workers in a bad economy,capitalizing on intellectual capital as an intangible asset applied to an undervalued stock for those in the know. Sometimes in big firms there is a systematic institutional harassment that goes on to ensure proper 'attrition' in employee base. Because management decides to run extremely low staffing while maintaining exceptionally high productivity standards, employees are put into a situation to fail in the eyes of the customer, who rarely has direct contact with the real authority which allocates resources to provide them with goods and services. In large firms,' innovation', "thinking outside the box" and so on are encouraged but when it is done and expressed those individuals are penalized or given token symbols of appreciation.
Among large firms which develop patents, many times the principal scientist(s)are only symbolically rewarded,stifling invention and innovation.One Fortune 500 company was known for giving a principal innovator a plaque plus $250.00 for an invention which might yield for the corporation millions in the fairly short term.
Some corporations, if a woman files a sexual harassment complaint, she is pressured to settle and sign a secrecy agreement which includes never being able to work for that company again.
Other large corporatons are shells for government agendas pushed into the economy as the workings of simply a large,powerful business entity.
Rating:
Summary: An Eye Opening Account
Review: Shipler reveals the truth regarding the conditions that "the working poor in America" are facing each day. Barely surviving, with few resources, this book is an outstanding account of the "real" America, thereby eliminating the faded American dream. In its place is poverty among the majority of middle America, with facts and suggestions for how to turn it around. A truly eye opening book.
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