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From:David K. Shipler , Knopf ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#183540 |
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6 of 11 customers found the following review helpful:
 Powerful, realistic and balanced portrayal of our society, 2005-01-21
Rivetting! It's hard to put the book down.
Shipler describes the families I work with, on a daily basis, to the tee and his analysis of macro systems is on the mark.
"Working Poor" IS an oxymoron.
In a country of such affluence, consumer consumption, corporate & individual greed, mean-spiritedness, and a general decline of a belief in the public good for all citizens...what "should" not exist (Working Poor) is a sad reality and unfortunate legacy of our times.
7 of 8 customers found the following review helpful:
Outstanding Look at Poverty in America, 2005-01-16
David Shipler's Working Poor is an excellent companion read to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed and offers a searing look at poverty in America.
Shipler's key contribution is to point out that overcoming poverty requires both luck and discipline. Bad breaks or poor luck managed by middle-class families with relative ease pose far greater obstacles for the poor. Take a mundane example-- a broken car. The middle-income family would get a tow to a repair shop and lease a new vehicle until the first was fixed. Inconvenient, but hardly disastrous. The same episode could force a poor family over the edge-- an inability to fix the car combined with the possibility of inadequate alternative transportation, public or otherwise, could lead to job loss and additional economic hardship.
The addition of family instability and hard-to-access or inadequate public services compound the difficulties faced daily by poor Americans.
Does individual responsibility affect the ability to defeat poverty? Shipler answers with a resounding yes, but reminds us that poverty imposes challenges of which wealthier Americans are unaware. Read this excellent book to gain additional insight and compassion.
2 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
This Book Works, 2005-01-14
In the land of the American Dream, it can be easy to turn a calloused heart to the plight of the poverty-stricken. After all they aren't victims...the American Dream is that people can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and with enough gumption and verve the plight of poverty can easily be broken if there is enough desire.
Shipler's book proves that is not the case. By getting into the fabric of the lives of the working poor who have given the American Dream a shot but found that dream has failed them, Shipler gives us an insider's eye to the dynamic multi-facted issues behind poverty. To break the cycle often-times requires that the planets are aligned, life must be just so, Murphy's Law needs to be suspended for a time. Shipler shows that the minimum wage is not a livable wage. Payday loans and tax return companies are wolves in wolves clothing. They take advantage of the people who can least afford to be taken advantage of...those that are in financial crisis to begin with.
Shipler, who had such success telling the personal side of things in "The Arab and the Jew," is in good form taking on the issue of poverty in "The Working Poor." As a measure of how a society is to be judges, one should look at how the poor and how children are treated. When we are viewed in history's eye, I wonder how we will be judged.
We can hear the message of David Shipler in this book and listen and listen hard. If so, we will be called to act.
--MMW
3 of 6 customers found the following review helpful:
Compelling format for a difficult, yet critical message, 2005-01-04
The life stories of each of these people really tear at your heart. While many have made mistakes in life, they live in a world where there is no recovery from even the slightest event.
Shipler's narrative is a very compelling format. It is similar to the approach that Molly Ivins uses in "Bushwacked". Rather than talking about a problem in an abstract, academic manner, they use real stories about real people to help you understand the impact of these events on others.
The approach here is one that the DNC would do well to pay attention to. When you look at how the country responded to Bill Clinton as opposed to Al Gore and John Kerry, it's clear that telling personal stories works. Ronald Reagan used it equally effectively. If the left is to get its message across, it needs its candidates to become effective storytellers, telling the stories of people like Shipler's Caroline, who did everything right - working overtime, going to college and saving money to buy a house only to find that she had no safety net when she had to make critical decisions to care for her (mildly) retarded daughter.
To the reviewer who complains that Shipler doesn't emphasize religion and private charities as the solution, I answer that the problems described in this book are not solveable by having charities pitch in to provide meals or clothes. These are structural deficiencies in our economic system. These people are not "charity cases". In most instances, they are people who work hard and need to be supported by an infrastructure that rewards their efforts and gives them a path to self-sustenance. Our current system, despite claims of "compassionate conservatism" does neither.
4 of 9 customers found the following review helpful:
Shows the irony of the educational industrial complex, 2005-01-03
Compelling work hits its highest marks in telling the story of the persons duped into lifetime student loan debt for useless college paperwork. This is something the mainstream media will not cover. Instead of wealth redistribution solutions, though, simple equity under the law as to bankruptcy access would be better. Why do the Donald Trumps of the world, large corporations, and the ruling elite get access to ancient bankruptcy traditions while the lower classes with student loan debt get compunded interest, collection and attorney fees, social security attachments, wage attachments, license revocation, debtor exams, and fines on top of fines for the rest of their miserable lives? Early in our nation's history, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said bankruptcy was to "to relieve unfortunate and honest debtors from perpetual bondage to their creditors... One of the first duties of legislation, while it provides amply for the sacred obligation of contracts, and the remedies to enforce them, certainly is, pari passu, to relieve the unfortunate and meritorious debtor from a slavery of mind and body, which cuts him off from a fair enjoyment of the common benefits of society, and robs his family of the fruits of his labour, and the benefits of his paternal superintendence."
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