Posted on 07/07/2002 7:19:46 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Just spent a lazy summer afternoon in the backyard devouring some books. The kids are in camp and I'm taking advantage of the quiet time!
Anyway, one of the books I read should have come with a barf bag. I picked it up this weekend at the Barnes & Noble on impulse because the title looked interesting (memo: Don't judge a book by its cover) and because I had a stack of history books in my hands, I didn't bother to see who the author was or to even look inside the pages. It was a $10 paperback that I figured would make a good "beach" book so what the hell, I paid for it and took it home.
When I took a closer look at it this morning, I discovered to my horror that it was by Barbara Ehrenreich. But I already paid my 10 bucks so I figured I'd at least read it before tossing it in the recycle bin. My review follows:
For this book, Barbara Ehrenreich, a nationally known left-wing feminist with socialist leanings, decided to "go slumming" so that she could vent her preconceived notions about class warfare and the "evils" of capitalism under the guise of "real" research.
The premise was flawed from the start. Barbara would pretend she was a divorced homemaker with no financial assets and no job experience and take unskilled, entry-level, low-paying jobs in the service sector in order to see if one could make ends meet on a minimum wage. Well this is as useless an endeavor as walking around with a blindfold for a few weeks and then deigning to write a book on what it is like to be blind! It is impossible for a person with a blindfold to know what it is like to be blind because they can always take the blindfold off whenever they want. Real blind people don't have the option. Well real poor people don't have the option to quit a job when the going gets rough and fall back on other resources like Barbara did not once, not twice, but three times!
Barbara didn't work a single job for more than a three or four weeks before abruptly quitting (without notice) whenever she got fed up and moving on to the next town. It was obvious that Barbara has a serious chip on her shoulder about corporate management. Her "research" is so one-sided that it is worthless to the reader. For example, she excoriates managers for having the audacity to expect their employees to show up on time every day drug-free! In fact, Barbara has a problem staying "drug-free" even for this three or four month "experiment" in the working class. One chapter details how she frantically looked for ways to clean out her system of marijuana so that she could pass the drug-tests now required by most employers. Mind you, this was after she quit her previous two jobs and knew full well that drug-tests were part of the application process. Barbara also makes the strange and unsupportable claim that the main purpose of drug tests is to "demean the workers."
Barbara misses no opportunity to bash conservatives and "right-wingers." So petty is Barbara's disdain for anything to the right of Karl Marx that she mentions at least twice in her book all the "neoconservative" books (like John Grisham and Rush Limbaugh) that line the libraries of the houses she has to clean (as a maid) and how she wishes she could take a rag of e-coli bacteria and spread it over their kitchen countertops. If you were to listen to Barbara, only conservative Republicans who read Rush Limbaugh books ever get their houses cleaned by maids.
A common theme throughout the book is that the minimum wage should be raised to a "living standard." But Barbara has quite high standards for a living wage. For example, Barbara states clearly in her book that it is an "unmistakable sign of financial impairment" to have a home in which the number of occupants exceed the number of bedrooms. So I guess if you have a family of four and only have three bathrooms, you need to have your wages increased to a living standard. Barbara also doesn't seem to realize that the minimum wage is directly tied to prices of goods and services. So if you were to double the minimum wage, those folks would end up paying double for everything anyhow, leaving them right where they started. Barbara misses the point that these jobs are "entry-level" and not meant to be career choices. You get one of these jobs if you have to but then you develop the skills and experience to move on to better things. But that would go against Barbara's socialist "working class hero" mentality.
But that working class hero stuff isn't Barbara's cup of tea. Those kind of jobs are for the great unwashed, not Phds like her. She's back in Key West by now (or maybe Martha's Vineyard) with the "beautiful people" chowing down on the polenta-crusted salmon filet with pesto sauce she mentions in her book while condenscendingly contemplating the "awful" cuisine of the proletariat class like TGI Fridays and Applebees. Oh, the horror!
As for me, reading this book was a real chore, but unlike Barbara, I stuck with it and finished the job.
But the working poor will stay the working poor no matter what we artificially set the minimum wage at because the prices of goods and services will quickly rise to a level where they are right back where they started.
I think I can speak on this subject with a lot more experience than the insufferable Barbara Ehrenreich because I worked these kinds of jobs and unlike Barbara, I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, nor did I have anything to fall back on.
My solution to the problem was simple. Instead of copping a "poor me" attitude that so plagues the working poor, due in large part to liberals like Ehrenreich, making them feel like they are being victimized by the nasty conservative capitalists, I simply busted my hump, developed my skills and moved on to better things.
These low-paying jobs are entry-level. They are not designed for people to make careers out of them. They exist to give people a foothold in the workplace so they can prove themselves and move on to positions of higher responsibility (and pay). The mentality that you can take a job as a supermarket bagger for $6 an hour and then expect the raises to come fast and furious has got to stop. A supermarket bagger is worth $6 an hour whether you've been doing it for fifteen years or for fifteen minutes. I was a supermarket bagger when I was 17 and I only did it for three months before I was promoted to the dairy department. And so on. If you take a job like this and you prove to be dependable and trustworthy, and able to take on additional responsibility, you will be promoted. Then, using that job as a reference, you can obtain a totally different job with a different company for even more responsibility and pay. This is what is called "building a resume." This country is full of people who went from stocking supermarket shelves to CEO. But you don't need to go all the way to CEO to be successful. You can make a very good living for yourself just by performing your job to the best of your ability and accepting new training, challenges and responsibility as the opportunities come along. Having the attitude "It ain't my job, man" or "I ain't doing nuttin' more than necessary" will ensure that you stay mired in these low paying jobs for life. But hey, I guess the world needs burger flippers and grocery baggers too.
G-d, A wastrel from He**
Deus Vult! 'Pod
What this book does prove conclusively is that overeducated East Coast Liberals with graduate degrees from zillion dollar Universities cannont survive on the street but we already knew that!
John a any kinda conservative is far out.
This lady is a genuine wack-job.
And I'm far from the only one who took what I learned from min wage jobs to go on to much better circumstances. That first rung on the ladder can be the hardest one to climb.
I have also worked for minimum wage- but I didn't make it my life's work to continue doing so!
Fortunately, there aren't too many right-wing feminists with socialist leanings.
You might get a response from her after she reads your Amazon review. I posted a review of a book and received a very long, detailed Email from the author, and we have been corresponding for more than 3 years. Another author sent me an Email to thank me for helping boost sales. LOL.
The vast majority of people who take these kind of jobs move on to better things. That is why we have such a huge and prosperous middle class in this country. There are millions of working-class people making decent livings in this country and they have the houses, cars and other trappings to prove it.
But there will always be a bottom rung on the ladder no matter how much the guilt-ridden liberals try to legislate or tax it away. We need people to do the "scut work" in this country too. Not everybody can be a prosperous white-collar worker with a big house in some leafy suburb - not all at the same time, anyhow. We will always need people to pick up the garbage or bag the groceries or wait on tables in restaurants, etc. Now people can work those kind of jobs all their lives or they can develop the skills necessary to move up to the next rung on the ladder so some young kid can take their place behind them for a while. The choice is up to them.
Isn't it neat to get those replies? I haven't received any replies to my negative reviews, but I know a few who have. I haven't received any books - free or otherwise - but I have served as a sounding board for plot development.
I've been at Amazon tonight reading the reviews of Wolfram's book; I think giving the book away might not improve the negative reviews.
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