Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

If you read my review on Nickel and Dimed, you know that I didn’t like it. This book, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, discusses her experiment of living as an “unskilled worker” and trying to make ends meet. I felt that the author went into her experiment with the goal of proving her hypothesis that essentially the system keeps people in poverty. This “begging the question” led her to avoid opportunities that would have helped her situation. Most notably, she doesn’t even take the advice of her co-workers and maintains a condescending, defeatist attitude throughout the book.

I started reading her newer book, Bait and Switch, which claims to expose the middle-class working world. But I felt it was more of the same; assuming that it’s impossible to get a job and not getting it. Assuming all career help resources are rip-offs and getting ripped off. Too much pontification and too little unbiased investigation.

So these books got me thinking: maybe when people tell us that that your attitude is 90% of the battle, they are correct. If you go into anything expecting to have a bad time, you most likely will. Your brain harps on whatever negative it can find: you’re tired, the movie will be bad, dinner service will be slow and so on.

The opposite applies too. If you go to a bad movie expecting it to be bad and expecting to have fun laughing at it, you’ll probably have fun.

I came across this story about a guy named Adam Shepard who tested the “American Dream”. He started with what he was wearing and $25. By the end of ten months he had an apartment, car, and saved almost $5000.

Obviously, he had a very different outcome than Ehrenreich. One thing that is evident is that Shepard that a very different attitude. His premise is that you can work your way up from poverty and that’s seems to be what he achieved. In fact, he set out to “disprove” Ehrenreich’s book.

So what were the differences between Ehrenreich and Shepard? Until I read Shepard’s book, I can only guess. But it seems like the major difference was their attitude. Of course, their gender and age are different. But, I’m not sure how much of a difference this would have made.

There are lots of similarities: both of them had an escape hatch (a “real life” they could fall back too), both have college education, and so on.

Of course, the big question is: why do some people get stuck in poverty? It surely can’t all be attitude; presumably there is some degree of luck, health, and circumstances. Obviously being a young man with a college education helped Shepard a lot.

I added this book on the list of things to read. I’ll let you know what I think when I get around to reading it!