Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (20th Anniversary Edition) Paperback – June 1, 2021

What can I say about this book? When I started reading it I was as appalled and shocked with the introduction as one might expect, she is going to give up her PH.D high salary lifestyle to go "mingle" with the minimum wage world so she can try to find some secret economy about the poor and than write a book about it? Sounded like a complete waste of time nonetheless demeaning like the poor was s disease that she was going to do research on. However as I got further into the book I knew that my concepts were going to change about her.The longer you stare into the abyss the longer it stares back at you, in chapter 1 of Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich author of the book was preparing to set off into an adventure that eventually turns a bit out of hand. Ehrenreich in need of a minimum wage job to start off everything had filled out 22 applicants for jobs and none of them called back leaving the impression that the employers simply put in the advertisement solely as a "filler" to replace the ones that are going to quit or get fired. Having read this first chapter I could tell already this journey of Ehrenreich is going to be a lot more grueling than she signed up for, seeing as how they treat their employees as expendable workers with no skills. Ehrenreich in return had no choice but to accept a job as a waitress, a job that she didn't want to take seeing as how she already was one when she was 18 and did not much enjoy the job, however Ehrenreich soon realizes that the job was more than a job and she soon felt responsible for delivering the food to the customers in need and soon starts to bond with them in her workplace. The accountability for the customers Ehrenreich served soon escalated as she picked up the tab for a customer who spent most of his money on dental surgery wanting them to be happy, Ehrenreich states ""If you seek happiness for yourself you will never find it. Only when you seek happiness for others will it come to you", (20). It's as though this job is starting to grow on her and becoming a part of her very nature and instilling morals in her. After reading the first chapter of this book I am appalled and amazed at this, It reinforces everything of my ideals and philosophy as I believe that working hard and doing manual labor instills great morals and responsibility into a person and trains that person to appreciate things in their life more, not less. Ehrenreich soon finds out that there is no secret economy to the poor and their whole life is horrifying compared to her old one and even now she is well-off than most of her co-workers who are living in trailer parks or in their cars in front of a parking lot. What endows me with adrenaline even more was reading that when Ehrenreich tried to return to her old life to catch up on things, she soon realized she wasn't the same person anymore, the foreshadowing of her life that has been flipped is amazing. How I feel is that these workers are like everyday people and once you get to know them they become a part of you just like everybody else. In the end of all of this Ehrenreich only felt failure, she states "I am in a position to realize, for the first time in many years, that the tear ducts are still there and still capable of doing their job", (48) the thought going through her mind as she quitted both her jobs in a semi-dramatic fashion and soon came into the realization that she was human just as much as anybody else.- Jamie Huynh Review

I thought this book was absolutely fantastic. I found it an easy, five-hour read of 221 pages. The negative reviews of this book, I believe, are coming from two sorts of people. First are those who wish the book to be something it is not. This book is NOT attempt to be a serious, sociological study. It is only what its author purports it to be-the experiences of ONE reporter, making three reasonable attempts, in three vastly different locales, to live at a minimally acceptable standard on the salaries offered in low-wage service positions.Other criticisms of this book came from those who felt the author was a left-wing extremist, against the rich, advocating transfer payments from rich to poor. A few people ranted and raved, in their reviews, about what "solutions" she was advocating. I think these people didn't read very carefully. I did not find her advocating any solutions at ALL, only bringing up the dilemmas, and posing questions that we should ALL be posing. But to accuse the author of advocating things which she did not say, is akin to putting words in her mouth, by some people who literally feel threatened by anyone who asks the questions she poses!The most overwhelming feeling I got from reading her book was of HOW RICH I AM (and I'm an American living in a third-world country)! Anyone who is feeling the least bit sorry for themselves in this life should read this book, and they will IMMEDIATELY feel better. Mainly, just having good food to eat every day, and being able to pay for medical, or dental, care whenever I need it is a true luxury that we all forget about, as well as having a comfortable roof over my head. We are all guilty of taking these things so much for granted, when we have them.The most important conclusion the author draws in this book is that low-wage jobs are so far out-of-whack with the costs of housing, and that this is what is just killing people, and keeping them barely surviving. She shows how this situation has gotten worse in recent years. It is certainly true that most people in low-wage jobs are working two jobs to make ends meet. I know this from personal experience. My husband, a foreign immigrant to America for a time, worked in a hotel cleaning rooms. He was the ONLY person who did not go to a second job at the end of an 8-hour shift (as we fortunately didn't NEED him to do that). What this author, and most Americans, may not realize however, is that this is NOT just an AMERICAN problem. It is true that the more socialistic countries in Europe "distribute the wealth" to lower-income persons. But they are about the ONLY countries in the world that do (Canada may also). In MOST countries of the world, salaries are FAR out-of-whack with housing costs. And the disparity if FAR worse than in America. But there is one difference in America. America has a lot of laws making it illegal to have too many people living in an apartment, for example. You aren't allowed to have more people that two in an apartment for each bedroom. In third-world countries, these restrictions don't exist. So you could have ten people crowding into a one-bedroom apartment. And believe me, they sometimes do. It's the only way to make ends meet, for a lot of people. This is a problem that has been with us since the world began, and will continue. I don't have a solution. I am not rich. But I FELT SO RICH reading this book. This book will help any person to really freshly appreciate what they do have. I HIGHLY recommend it to EVERYONE.