Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Nickel and Dimed is a bestselling and highly acclaimed book written by Barbara Ehrenreich where she tries to live as a “unskilled” worker. She works as waitress, housekeeper, and then a Walmart associate, and recounts her experiences trying to make ends meet. It’s a great idea for investigative journalism, so I was excited to read it.

Unfortunately, the book was disappointing for a number of reasons. There was no discussion about potential solutions for the problems at hand, there was way too much liberal guilt and socialist platitudes, and the author spent more time talking about herself (mentioning she has a PhD. every other page) than talking about what she learned from her peers.

The author seemed surprisingly sheltered from the “working class” and came off as a upper middle class elitist. She never really talks to her co-workers to understand how they live and how they get by. And she never transcends her own sense of entitlement and superiority. For example, she considered going to California for her experiment, but didn’t because of her “worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves.”

Take that thought and combine it with assertion that “the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise.” It’s enough to make one’s head explode. If there are lots of people willing to work for low wages, the laws of supply and demand would assert that wages would not increase. To even consider that there is a direct relation between rents and low-end wages shows a severe lack of understanding of even basic economics.

Ehrenreich doesn’t stay at any job for more than 3 weeks and as a result exclusively lives in temporary housing. But temporary housing must, by definition, be priced at a premium. She even says that a family can rent a modest home for less than she paid for horrible temporary quarters. Yet, there are many, many pages dedicated to how hard it was for her to find affordable housing.

She gets extremely mad and offended some of the jobs require drug testing. Well, considering that lots of jobs today require it and that she even mentions a “chemical discrepancy” of hers before the test was scheduled, it’s silly to complain about.

Ehrenich rarely talks about her co-workers or what’s she learned from them. The one time that she actually talks to someone, they advice her to “find a church”. But she never goes to a church to get help for finding housing, a job, or groceries. Instead she makes repeated bad choices like $11 dinners, $30 on medicine to mask her drug use, and never sticking around on a job. Most times she doesn’t even properly quit her jobs, she just stops showing up.

She clearly said at the onset that she didn’t want to live the exact life of her co-workers. So in that case it would have been better to sit at home and volunteer as a social worker to get to know the “working class” and then research, research, and research.

Also I should point out, I hate the term “working class”. It’s very insulting and elitist, which is why I keep putting it in quotes. Except for a small amount of people, everyone works for the money they need to live their lives.

It’s too bad, the basic idea of the book is excellent. The lack of research, lack of follow-through, and obvious agenda ruined it. The problem of poverty is very real and more honest thorough discussion still needs to happen. Despite all the books accolades, I don’t recommend reading it.