Hearing From the Working Poor

"NICKLE AND DIMED: On (not) Getting By in America", by Barbara Ehrenreich, reads like a good novel, but is in fact a factual, scientific description of an experiment. The experiment consists of Ehrenreich, who has a doctorate in Biology and is a Successful writer, delving into the world of minimum wage work, and reporting on it. She starts from scratch, gets minimum wage jobs, and tries her best to live on them. She is a highly intelligent, well educated woman, who makes good decisions, the best she possibly can, all along the minimum wage way. The result is shocking. Her report is a good way for people to understand the plight of America's working poor, who number in the millions. In fact, twenty five percent of all homeless Americans are employed full time, and go to work, and keep their jobs. Then, they live in the streets when they are off work. Having a job in America does not guarantee having a living income... Books like this might ultimately spark the next "Occupy Wall Street" protest, and render it far more effective than the first. Someday, somebody will write a novel about the plight of the poor, it will become even more popular than "The Grapes of Wrath" or "The Jungle", and the rest will be history. For in modern American, conditions are nearly that bad among the working and non working poor. the fifteen dollar an hour people haven't gone away. They're still making seven and eight an hour at McDonald's and other fast food corporations, and still seething, living in trailers with crowds, walking to work, trying to raise children, and seething. Reckon we'll hear more from that crew, soon enough.