Book Review – Nickel and Dimed
Image: Nickel and Dimed by Lucy Lantz (CC BY-NC-ND)
5 out of 5 stars
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich is the powerful story of what life is like for low-wage workers in America. Ehrenreich goes undercover in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota to see if she can get by on the wages she earns as a server, a housecleaner, and a Walmart employee, among other jobs, proving to her readers that the minimum wage is insufficient to support a single woman who has preexisting advantages, not to mention a single mother with debt and no family or friends to assist her.
In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich outlines the tedious and often demeaning realities of low-wage job application, as well as the physical and mental strain caused by these jobs. Although the cities where she applied claimed to have a worker shortage, she was often never called back, and when she was, she was treated with disdain and distrust. Many low-wage employers treat potential employees as criminals, requiring drug tests, which are quite expensive and ineffective at showing whether a person has consumed more dangerous drugs than marijuana, and “personality tests” - questionnaires that contain queries such as “Are you more or less likely than other people to get into a fistfight?”
Ehrenreich does manage to land several jobs, and once she does, she learns how stressful and demanding low-wage jobs are. She relays the exhaustion caused by cleaning house after house, day after day. She tells of fellow employees growing faint because they cannot afford a proper meal, of a pregnant woman forcing herself to work until she can barely stand because if she misses one day of work she won’t be able to buy food the next, of a Walmart employee who is unable to purchase a stained shirt on clearance from Walmart itself because it costs an hour’s pay. Through this book, Ehrenreich shines a light on the disturbing truth of America’s unseen workers, the ones who refill your water glass and hang up the clothes you return.
This book surprised me. I didn’t believe it would change my perspective on poverty in America at all, as I have always been supportive of higher minimum wages and government programs to help the poor, yet it did. Although I had sympathy for those living in poverty, I didn’t understand how widespread poverty is or the extent to which the cycle of poverty maintains the status quo, making sure the poor remain so. Whether you hold a more liberal view of wages and government support for the poor or you believe that if the poor only worked as hard as you do they would be fine, I strongly recommend you read this book. It will give you a better understanding of socioeconomic differences in America and convince you of why the minimum wage must be increased. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.
