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From:David K. Shipler , Knopf ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#365834 |
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1 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
 Fascinating Read, 2006-12-11
This book reminds us that the working poor are among the hardest working in the nation despite their low wages and substandard working conditions. Shipler expertly pieces together the stories of those stuck in this people group with background info, historical data and explanation. Now, if only Shipler had told us what we could do about it...
5 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
The American Dream: A Raisin in the Sun, 2006-12-07
The maxim of work hard and achieve your own version of the American Dream proves to be no longer the case for many in David K. Shipler's "The Working Poor". Shipler follows several families and individuals who are working, but barely able to afford the basics--shelter, food, and clothes. The author is a witness to their lives over several years as job loss, health problems, addiction, low wages, poor decisions and fear prevail. Shipler unravels the sticky web that the working poor seem to have found themselves meshed within. Not one factor such as low education holds the poor down, but a veritable string of woes that form a symbiotic web often too powerful to break.
Shipler is deft in connecting the dots within "The Working Poor". For example, a single mother of one child can only afford rent in a drafty, moldy apartment. The mold exacerbates the child's asthma. The mother's employer is growing weary of her taking time off to take the child to the doctor. Despite numerous pleas, the landlord will not fix the mold problem. The child's condition worsens, therefore increased doctor visits are made and eventually the mother is fired. In order to make ends meet, she uses a credit card (an extremely high-interest card since she falls within the low-income bracket and has bad credit from previous mishaps).
Although there are some success stories to be found, the overall prevailing theme is one of decent hard-working people still facing poverty. Of course, laziness, drug issues and other factors have placed some individuals into the depths of destitution through their own hands. But Shipler eruditely points out numerous circumstances that have put many behind the eight ball through no fault of their own, most notably an educational system that fails to provide the basic skills of reading and writing. Couple low education with global competition and the individual's only choice of work are menial jobs that pay non-livable wages.
"The Working Poor" is powerful for it follows several lives over a significant period of time; this process allows the reader to clearly see the totality of the poor's struggles. Shipler's research displays the poverty issue as being more complex than what may what appear on the surface to those living a comfortable distance from the edge of poverty. Shipler elucidates obstacles and bureaucracy that have made The American Dream a raisin in the sun for far too many hard-working men and women.
Bohdan Kot
2 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
Helping the poor helps relieve us of our spiritual poverty, 2006-11-06
Shipler's book is an eye opener. We in the US tend to think of ourselves as a wealthy nation, which we are, and that we all share in that wealth (or at least have an equal chance at becoming wealthy). Maybe at some point in our history that might have been true, but it is far from true now. We have institutionalize so many economic barriers, that some of our citizens can never escape the poverty trap.
This book gives readers the most important tool in finding the solution to poverty--AWARENESS. We need to look beyond our small corners of the country and of society and take steps to tear down the barriers.
7 of 7 customers found the following review helpful:
READ THIS BOOK!, 2006-11-04
If you're debating on this book or "Nickle and Dimed" ... get this one! Shipler has managed to take a difficult subject and bring it down to a bare basic level that everyone can understand. Having lived a life of the working poor since I was born, I relate to everything in this book. I know all these people cause they are all me at some point or another. He hits the nail on the head describing a life that revolves around "things working out". If the child support payments keep coming, if the food stamps hold out, if the car keeps running, if the price of gas doesn't sky rocket, if the kids don't get sick, if my mom keeps watching the kids, if i can get some overtime this paycheck, if my landlord will let me pay every two weeks.... All these people are just one "if" away from being homeless. Shipler states head on that the federal minimum wage is $4.04 BELOW the national poverty line. That should stir genuine and outright anger! There is no way to justify a country as rich as America deliberately putting the majority of its population BELOW poverty. This country builds its empire on our backs and refuses to open the door and let us in! It's about time someone read the facts, absorbed the facts and DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Read this book, share this book, talk about this book, write about this book and then do something to make a change, do something to make a difference. Everyone that has some degree of comfort owes it to society to make a difference, since it's because of us....because of our sacrifice, because of our cheap labor, because of our poverty that you're so comfortable. If there was ever a must read book, this is the one.
1 of 4 customers found the following review helpful:
 (Working) Poor - some questions still remain, 2006-10-26
The author seems to suggest in the book that a more robust version of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" will suffice to bring most, if not all, out of the drudgery of poverty, working poor or not. His message is not new, as sociologists have planned and plotted the new campaign against poverty even before the traditional welfare system was replaced be welfare-to-work programs. The undercurrent of the book and it's barely concealed critique of the Clintonesque attempt to triangulate a different way to approach poverty by adding the force of the marketplace and self-empowering training/ education programs, is not without merit. Welfare-to-work presupposes that those who have been living via welfare and food-stamps would prefer to have a job and the respect that comes with it. Author Shipler uses examples of those who have not risen much above the poverty line, though they work jobs to survive, so as to illustrate the failure of society to sufficiently address those hanging on the edge of the economic ladder. He gives us an interesting cohort to look at, as they are a mixture of down-on-their-luck downwardly-mobile persons and those who come from a history and culture of dependency on the welfare system. Some of these folks, not as many as some lawmakers would like to think, do go up two or three levels in the class structure, achieving a middle-class life and its rewards, albeit not exactly the celebrated rag-to-riches story. My main criticism of this book would be in the area of understanding (or lack thereof) of those poor people that have come from a history and culture of living dependent on societies good graces, and where their vision of themselves as potentially living the American Dream is stunted early-on, so that eventually that dream is disarmed by their inculcation of methods and discourse that come to aid them in working the system and surviving in the mind-numbing, ego-busting, grind of life at the very bottom of societies' caste system. Consider this (somewhat awkward) analogy. Inmates in a prison are often incarcerated for long periods, basically cared for and maintained by institutional mechanisms that mostly warehouse people, where they are forced to exist in a grey, dull, dangerous, isolated locality for many years. It is a well-known fact that inmates will become adept at working the system, know what guards, nurses, chaplains, will be useful in their existence, and many will eventually become institutionalized. Consider the poor, where they live in the margins of society, where they are silenced by bureaucracy, excluded from many ordinary social practices, and are often shamed by mainstream society. It seems, contrary to the overarching claims by Shipler, that a correct formulation of an anti-poverty program with all problems being addressed simultaneously and in concert with some grand design (social theory), will not solve the problem of poverty in America, especially if one fails to take into account the history and environment of those trapped for many years in the "system". His take on the poor, which seems to be, more or less, that they are just folks without money and education, should be called into question. As one's history creates opportunity for the middle-class and well-to-do, so does another history, the personal history of the long-suffering poor and its affect on one's psyche, health, and abilities. Individual history has a significant impact on the potential of a person trapped in poverty, where they often remain trapped along with one's kin for generations. This is a factor that must be understood and accounted for when society asks what harm has been done to those in need, and what potential exists for the truly downtrodden to achieve that thing we all believe human's possess to realize that quintessential self. No, I do not think the poor are criminals, but the poor function at times like one trapped in a prison of societies making, though obviously some responsibly exists for the individual to break free from their condition through zealous commitment to do the best possible whenever opportunity strikes. Poverty is functional, and the author of this otherwise insightful book does not seem to take that particular factor into account in his assessment of the constellation of factors that make-up what we call being (working) poor in America. I must add that Shipler's realization that many of this nation's poor work is right on, but for those who know the poor, who are poor, the fact that they must work whenever the opportunity presents itself, covertly when one receives SSI and/ or traditional ADC, and otherwise in today's welfare-to-work environment, is obvious.
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