A Review of Nickel and Dimed: On ( Not) Getting By in America

By Remy Benoit

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich is a MUST read book.

Metropoliltan Books: Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2001

Ms. Ehrenreich traveled from Florida, to Maine, to Minnesota to research this book, taking a variety of jobs. She learned, up close and personal, the realities of the $6-$7 an hour job world working as a cleaning woman, a maid, a nursing home aide, and a sales clerk.

What she found was a world of NOT getting by without at least one other supplemental job. What she found was NOT getting by in the sense of acceptable living quarters, food, clothes.

What she found was trying to keep a roof over your head, some food on the table, children provided for.

What she found was a desire to live as those with true finanacial prosperity do

And yet even with all the fear, anxiety, and doing without, what she also found a profound generosity among those who share this life.

Read this book and your perspective will change on those who answer the phones and greet you in an office as a receptionist; those who wait on your table in a nice restaurant; those who clean your home or your motel room, or wait on you in a large store.

Read this book and you will begin to wonder what you can do to help change the economic position of those (NOT) getting by in America.

What you will find is that in helping others, you are also helping yourself to peace.

NickelandDimedinAmerica.

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