Imagine wanting nothing more than a day off from work that still allowed you to be able to buy groceries the next day.
I keep thinking about Ehrenreich's observation that the wage she is earning is not a living wage but an "emergency" wage. Have you ever been in an emergency? An accident or some other incident? Your adrenaline is charged, you feel frantic, you panic. You can't slow down or take a breather.
That's what she describes of her life in Maine working 2 jobs (7 days a week) and still getting behind on money. No time to even think about her situation.
This book is designed to be sensational -- to illuminate and magnify the lives of low-wage workers, and sometimes I wish that the tone were more even, but I doubt it would have the same effect. Does it make me look at low-wage workers in a different light? Yes. Does it make me grateful that I'm not one of them? Yes. Am I willing to pay more for goods and services in order for them to make more money? That's a good question!
I think the whole economic structure has to be challenged, not just the wages of people at the bottom of the ladder (notice how executives are not paid wages -- they are paid in salaries and options). I think it's a problem that the blame for rising prices gets pinned on people who barely make enough to live on. Who else could or should shoulder the responsibility for that?
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I agree. I think that we often get so caught up in our own lives that we fail to realize that there are people who are under a tremendous amount of pressure and they get paid way less the others do deal with it. Working with people who have low income home loans, I hear the hardships that they face everyday in order to make ends meet. During the summer when gas prices were at a record high, a lot of them could not afford to drive their jobs. They don't have the luxury of annunal leave or even sick leave. A missed day or two constitutes unemployment and eventually foreclosure. Her book brought to light the people that we look past everyday and forces us to examine our own policies and our responsibility to change them.
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