Book - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich

Paperback, 230 pgs, published 2001. Reader's Guide version. Excellent used condition. No writing, no dog-ears. Binding is tight, all pages are intact. "Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998 undercover journalist Barbara Ehrenreich decided to look into the impact of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act on the working poor in the United States. The rhetoric surrounding welfare reform promised that a job―any job―could be the ticket to a better life in America. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on minimum wage? Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Here, she shares the truths of the matter that too many of us know first-hand: that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. Most frightening: that one minimum-wage job is not enough; you need at least two if you want to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals a hard-working America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity―a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival." I first read this not too long after my last waitress job. Sadly just as relevant now as it was when it was written 💙