Nickel and Dimed Critique

http://www.democraticunderground.com/books/01/nickel.html

Democraticunderground.com’s review of Nickel and Dimed mirrored my own thoughts on the book. The review starts: “I no longer see motels the same way since reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.”, something that I particularly agreed with. Socially and generally, motels are associated with “a place to rest your head between bouts of driving”, like the review says, as well as with horror films such as Psycho; they are not typically seen as places where people stay for more than “two nights”, let alone actually live.

Interestingly, deomcraticunderground.com talks about the things that the middle class “take for granted”, such as: “housing, food, gas”; and while this may be true, I felt as though the critic thought that all middle class people existed in a vacuum, where in reality, these middle class people probably went to college (university) getting an education that would allow for them to have higher paid jobs, and the advantage of taking some things, like food, for granted. This was another point I found interesting about Nickel and Dimed. Barbara Ehrenreich, never explicated explained the reasons for her co-workers, or people in low paid labour jobs, having those jobs in the first place. Something that struck me when reading, was in ‘Scrubbing in Maine’, when Ehrenreich was working for the maid service she mentions how Holly usually asks for the spelling of words like; “carry” and “weighed”, suggesting that Holly did not get an education, and so to some extent it could be argued that it’s her fault for having the job that she has. This is further supported by Ehrenreich saying that she would not include any of her qualifications, suggesting that the types of people, who work in low paid labour jobs, do not have qualifications. I also think that the fact that employers are having to ask questions such as; “It's sometimes okay to come to work high” and that they have become “routine” also suggest the kinds of people that are having these kinds of jobs.

However, it is unsurprising that democraticunderground.com would have taken an interest in Nickel and Dimed and found it “thought provoking”. This is because, firstly, the name of the website implies a left-wing, equal opportunity approach; and secondly, because at the side there is an icon saying: “TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS” and it could be inferred that they perhaps blame the poor conditions of the people that Ehrenreich had to work with, on them [the conservatives], or at least feel like the conservatives are not helping to increase standard of living.