So I made a mistake the other way: I grabbed Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” of my parents’ bookshelf. I find poverty a pretty interesting subject, thus why I studied economics, which has the improvement of material welfare as its essential concern. Another recent book on the working poor, Jason DeParle’s “American Dream is excellent. Ehrenreich’s book is the exact opposite.Ehrenreich is a freelance writer with a healthy dose of upper-class guilt. Her Dad was originally a copper miner, but rose to become a business executive, and Ehrenreich was raised in a leafy Northeastern suburb. Her first major work was a sociology book criticizing welfare reform, claiming that “forcing people to work” is unjust and that some people “ought be able to opt-out of work.” So that’s where we start. Nickel and Dimed is about her journey working around the US, taking low-paying jobs, and seeing how impossible is it to get by.

I’ve worked every job that she works in the book. Nursing home? Check. Retail? Check. Cook? Check. Dishwasher? Check. They weren’t that bad. Ehrenreich, however, is constantly cussing out her bosses, complaining of “exhaustion” (at one point, she refuses a high-paying job because she was too tired from an 8-hour orientation the day before), and looking down on her “exploited” coworkers. It’s interesting that the few times she reports on what her coworkers think of their job, they generally claim that the job isn’t bad for now and that they hope to move up the ladder as they grow older. They just as well could have told Ehrenreich that in Swahili, because she writes this sentiment off as delusion.

Beyond this, though, is the trouble Ehrenreich has making ends meet (or even not being homeless!) during this stretch. Are you serious? First, she manages to rent places (on a weekly basis) that cost between 600 and 1000 dollars per month. This is in places like Portland and Minneapolis. I can get you studios in Boston for less than that. Thought experiment: A full time job at $7/hour gets you 13000 a year after social security. I’ll assume that you have insurance of some kind, since even places like Blockbuster will give it to you. At 400 for rent and 200 for food, you’re left with 500 bucks for other expenses. I’ve never had a coworker as hard up for cash as Ehrenreich makes herself out to be, and I’ve certainly never had a coworker with as low a tolerance for manual labor as Ehrenreich has. Gah.

If you’re still up for some Ehrenreich hilarity, she has a debate on Slate this week with Jason Furman, a fairly left-wing economist with a Harvard PhD. By the end, and I’m not exaggerating, she’s calling for class solidarity and proletarian movements to increase the wages at WalMart. It’s good stuff.

We’re finally heading out on the roadtrip in a couple days! The loop is a bit truncated, but still, it’s gonna be sweet.

PS: I completely forgot my favorite part of the book.  Walmart gives her a job on the spot and sets an appointment for her drug screening.  “I had a slight indiscretion,” she says.  Ah, no worries, Ehrenreich, they won’t detect that J you smoked back in ‘72.  But no.  The ignorant, pill-popping, New York Times-writing, wannabe revolutionary was apparantly unaware that low-wage jobs make you take a drug test.  Now, I think drug tests are a waste of time because you have to be an imbecile to be caught; just lay off the pipe for a week, my groovy sista.   Ehrenreich had apparantly Cheech-n-Chong’d it a couple days before this interview.  So I guess that drug tests can catch some people: ignorant New York yuppies pretend to be proletariat.

PSS: Incidentally, I finally heard from the CIA.  I guess the fact that I came up as having 1) a history of drug use, 2) known terrorist connections, and 3) a long-term connection with a foreign espionage service, during my lie detector test didn’t bother them in the end.  When they called, I told them that, when they asked in April, I said I had bills to pay and needed to know about the job by May 20.  Today is June 29.  It woulda been cool to work for the Agency, though; I was going to be right in Langley, writing reports for the President’s Daily Brief (not bad, right?).   Then again, the management there are a bunch of screwups at the moment, and morale is disastrous, so maybe I’m better off not working there.  Did I mention how hard it is to take language classes at the CIA?  You’d think they’d have free nightly classes in Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, Uzbek and the rest.  No.  Nothing.  Sometimes they give long-term workers time off to study at a University.  Are you serious?  Well, let’s just hope the terrorists speak English then.