Josh Hesterman
Bioe301
Book Review
Nickel and Dimed
‘The key to success is hard work’. ‘Sometimes you have to grit your teeth and work through the pain’. ‘Put one foot in front of the other, and eventually you’ll make it.’ Perhaps you’ve heard one or more of these quotes—in some context—and filed it away under ‘motivational’, to be retrieved the next time you need a quick pick me up; a burst of inspiration to keep you moving when you feel at the end of your rope and can’t work any more. For a number of those living below the poverty line in America, these maxims are nothing more than painful deception, as it becomes apparent that the best they have to give is not enough. Author Barbara Ehrenreich tackles these and other misconceptions about America’s ‘working poor’ in a book entitledNickel and Dimed. Her social experiment gives her a firsthand—if a bit artificial—look at whether it is possible to live life from payment to payment on the abysmally low minimum wage guaranteed by federal law, and the physical and psychological effects that occur as aresult of living in such a marginalized position for such a long amount of time.
The most interesting of the jobs for me was her stint at Wal-Mart at the end of the book. It is in this setting that we see the most tangible effects of the upper-dominating-lower class scenario that Ehrenreich speaks about in the rest of her story. The fact that Wal-Mart actively denounce unions and union organization, heaps on meaningless rules for no apparent reasons, and expect their workers to cling to the most absurd, corporation-centric attitude that any person can lay claim to, join together to show that Wal-Mart exploits their ‘associates’ in many implicit ways that wear down the workers. This brings the focus off of the low quality of their job (and wages), and forces them into a tunnel vision precluding them fromrecognizing and challenging the sad state of their everyday work environment. Couple this with the fact that employees don’t even receive a healthcare proposal worth buying into (the majority of the author’s orientation group chose not to), and you have a recipe for a disaster which combines the economic and the personal in ways that should remain apart at the better discretion of both employer and employee.
This relates to our class because of the interdisciplinary, multi-angle approach that the author tackles this problem with. In a situation as complex as America’s current socioeconomic setting, it’s reasonable to assume that there was no simple, single cause that led to the stratification of the classes. The author makes certain to point this out, and it’s a theme that we cover often in class as well. The technologies that are available in various parts of the world are not solely dictated by what our scientists and engineers are able to create at any given time; instead, we compromise based upon economic and political concerns (among others) that sometimes temper our idealism with reality. The HIV/AIDS epidemic, for example, which has the highest likelihood of being solved in the prevalent populations of Africa, is an ethical situation that we will soon confront even more directly than we have already. Competing interests from every possible angle are currently colliding, each with something to say about the ethical, legal, and moral standards of scientists who choose these populationsfor their tests. It is easy enough to see the many forces at work, but more difficult to see past them and onto the people which will eventually be affected as a result of all of our high-minded (but well-intentioned) ethical debate. This, I think, is the real point behind Ehrenreich’s work. She feels that some Americansbelieve they’re special simply because they were lucky enough to be born into a class afforded the benefits of education. But she argues that with literacy and clout comes a great deal of responsibility. If we can’t see how this giant, swirling mass of factors affects each other, let alone the people affected by them at the end of the line, we will never be able to take even the most preliminary steps toward eliminating a culture that treads upon and breaks the backs of those who need its help the most.