Nickel & Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (A Review) - Obnoxious Book Alert

[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.

[discostu]

Of course the 4th Ammendment has absolutely nothing to do with one's EMPLOYER testing them. The 4th applies to the government. Thanks to the freedom of association outlined in the 1st there's nothing wrong with an employer puting all kinds of wierd restrictions on their employees... it also allows the employees to give the employer the finger and go find a better job, or no job. There's no rule that says you have to work for employer X or for any employer at all. Could always learn to juggle and make money at street fairs.

[parsifal]

Thank you. Now I feel better. If I can just convince Alan Chapman,and Action in America that I ain't a Marxist. PS- What did you think of the Quantum Greed Theory? parsy the conservative liberal.

[discostu]

Never heard of the Quantum Greed Theory, but if it says greed runs the world I'd agree with it, unless it thought that was bad. Greed, like so many other things, is perfect A-OK in small doses, it's when it goes crazy and runs amok (Enron, WorldCom, Merkt, ArthursAnderson i'm talking to you) then it's bad.

[BADROTOFINGER]

Your reply somehow slipped by me, but a buddy of mine is writing an essay on Bab's trash, and while searching I noticed your reply. Mine is as follows.

You would have to be a complete freakin' idiot to compare the 1st amendment right to association between private individuals to the 4th amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure by the government. Thats 6th grads civics, pal.

Of course, since your 'reply' to my post quickly deteriorates into varied irrelevancies, no further intellectual value can be gleaned from your post. This sorry state of affairs is further punctuated by your invoking of Godwin's Law at the end of your ramblings by referring to me as 'Herr Himmler'.

You call me a Nazi, but totally support the power (not a right, but a power, the govt does not have 'rights') of the government to interfere in a particularly jack-booted manner in the affairs of two parties whose only crime is exercising their 1st amendment rights.

Your use of 'dignity' as some sort of right is curious as well. Exactly what is undignified about agreeing to a contract (of sorts) with an employer, and holding up your end of it? I have gained dignity by following my word, not lost it. Perhaps we own different dictionaries. All of your examples are all so spectacularly over the top (and irrelevant) that all of us know that they are purely fanatical fiction. And of course, only in the world of fanatical fiction can your arguement hold any weight. Take care...JFK

[Revolting cat!]

Aside from the review itself (a good one at that!), you have a curious method of selecting your reading matter, I must say. This book, I think this is the one where she works as a waitress, is what caused a rift between my non-working, well off and sentimental liberal sister-in-law and myself, who started out as a minimum wage dishwasher at a Holiday Inn before being promoted (after two weeks) to a busboy and then higher. The rift started over an argument at a Vietnamese Pho cafeteria-like restaurant, my regular hangout, where she was visiting from far away, and where I tried to dissuade her from grossly overtipping after the usual careless, hurried and impersonal service by the owner family members plus a Mexican dishwasher/busboy/food server.

But as far as selecting non-fiction reading matter, I strongly recommend reading reviews instead, even in the NYT Book Review Sunday supplement. That is usually sufficient, as non-fiction books these days, unless they are history books or memoirs, are typically stretched out essays, containing no more than a handful of ideas repeated endlessly throughout, if that (check out the single idea Theodore Roszak, for example.) I had read reviews of this very book and, believe me, everything in your report sounded familiar, as if I had read the book myself, but without all the aggravation that came with it.