Reading Journal

When reading Ehrenrich's book, I realized that I had read this is high school. We spent the entire quarter studying the disadvantages that she faced during this experimentation.

One of the first things she found was that, "trailer trash was now a demographic to aspire to." A person making $7 an hour will have several difficulties finding affordable housing; the main difficulty is that almost any rental requires the first month's rent and a security deposit in advance. Unless you're living in your car - which she found was the case for many of her coworkers - it's nearly impossible to save up that kind of cash on $7 an hour. Thus, the motels, which don't require as much money upfront, but end up costing the low-income worker two or three times as much as a small apartment might.

She found, in the course of her experiment, that many other things that a middle-class person takes for granted are completely out of reach for the 40% of the population who aren't making a living wage. She scrambles for housing, food, the money to launder her scant wardrobe, gas for her car. At one point, despite her resolution to make do without food stamps or other assistance, she has to go to a food bank, and finds the gift of food almost unusable, since her motel room lacks either cooking facilities or refrigeration. Even working two jobs, seven days a week, she still nearly has to resort to a shelter; had she become injured or ill, even the $19/night shelter would have been beyond her means.

Drug tests and psychological screening examinations, with statements such as "It's sometimes okay to come to work high," have become routine. Employers refuse employees the right to drink water while they work, coerce them into working uncompensated overtime, fire them when their work-related injuries render them unable to work, subject them to constant harangues and humiliations that most of us have never experienced and cannot imagine enduring.

Among the things she found were that no job is truly unskilled; even the lowliest occupation requires great mental and physical tenacity and endurance. She concludes that the working poor, "are, in fact, the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high."

I really believe in acting against low wage work so reading this truly interests me and helps me find some interest in actually reading a book!