Review: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Socialists are middle class. The working class don't want a revolution, they just want more money.

Paraphrasing Alan Moore aside, I wouldn't say I 'enjoyed' this book. It's far too depressing for that. The reason being is because of how little has changed in previous decades. Not only since the book came out, but since before the book was even released. This book could have been released in the 1980s, 2000s, or 2020s and would be relevant regardless. It's upon that realization that the depression really sets in. So I wouldn't say people should read it because they would 'like it', because they won't, but rather it will likely challenge their worldview. And people should always read books that perform that rare feat.

The ground-level focus of the book is its strength and its weakness. The micro-level experience gives a real human face to the issues facing the underpaid but the macro-level statistics only work if you assume everyone's perspective is the same. And I always maintain that you can't use the micro to justify the macro (and vice versa). Just because one person survives cancer doesn't mean it isn't a deadly disease.  This is further complicated by two out of the three cities being heavy tourist hubs that are viewed during their off-seasons. While her points aren't invalid, it does skew the results. It would be like taking global temperature readings where one test was on the equator and the other was on the north pole.

To get the objective portion out of the way, the book is well written. It's everything you'd expect from someone who was educated in the most mayo of liberal arts colleges. I mean this both in a technical and artistic level. Not only does the book communicate all the information clearly but it also makes you feel it emotionally. One glance at many of the other basic bitch reviews shows judgment being heavily swayed by cognitive dissonance, but, regardless of how your lukewarm evolutionary leftovers make you feel about the subject matter, no one can successfully argue it isn't at least well written.

I could make several arguments for and against this book, but I think that would miss the overall point. I don't think anyone without rotten karma would disagree that the working poor has a terrible time of it. The point of the book being to expose how bad it truly is and how we're being less and less aware of it from the socially forced segregation of the classes. The main underlying issue with the book is the power of assumption that there needs to be a dramatic change to fix things. But, if there's anything one can learn from this book, is that the working poor doesn't have the time or inclination for revolution. They just don't want to be poor.

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