The Working Poor: Invisible in America

This book puts a face on poverty by dissecting the complex web of cause/effect, following personal stories of American families. "Not just low wages but also low education, not just dead-end jobs but also limited abilities, not just insufficient savings but also unwise spending, not just poor housing but also poor parenting, not just lack of health insurance but also lack of healthy households. (p285)"

Poverty is a constellation of problems, none of which exist in a vacuum. "A job alone isn't enough. Medical insurance alone is not enough. Good housing alone is not enough. Reliable transportation, careful family budgeting, effective parenting, effective schooling are not enough when achieved each in isolation from the rest. (p11)" Shippler shows it with personal, real examples -- the woman who looked like she was set with a job until a medical emergency ruined her credit rating due to an ambulance bill (p26), immigrants covered by federal insurance who didn't understand how to effectively take their own medicines, the woman who heroically scrimped and saved enough to own her own home only to lose it... each a story where a family had most of the 'poverty bases' covered, and an unexpected illness or layoff destroyed them.

In terms of solutions, Shipler is vague, stressing how concentrating on a single symptom will not cure poverty. He praises the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) and the Head Start Program, as both make major differences in the life of the poor. He stresses a single payer health insurance plan would help a lot (doubt he'd be complimentary of Obama's solution), and that inner city schools aren't about more money, they are about more good parenting. This is a great book for dissecting the causation of poverty, but Shipler doesn't offer much about solving the problem.

I've at five stars because I believe this should be required reading for high school students and congress people. It is superior to Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America because it takes a long look at the entire picture of poverty, rather than simply unemployment. Learned things from this book.

Also for those doing research papers... Shipler has one of the most useful and comprehensive indexes I've ever seen in non-fiction.

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

David Shipler takes up where Barbara Ehrenreich left off in Nickel and Dimed. However, where Ehrenreich examined the working poor with a microscope, Shipler uses a wide-angle lens.

Shipler interviews the working poor as well as poor people who are out of work, employers, case workers, and teachers of poor children. The title is a little misleading, in that this book takes on American poverty, not just those who are working.

While Ehrenreich got involved personally by becoming one of the working poor, Shipler observes and sympathizes. His sympathy is understandable, but at times I wondered just how much it was affecting his journalistic objectivity. Many times he relates events, apparently told to him by the people he interviewed. He doesn't qualify these stories in any way and they are told as if he was telling them first hand. His chapter on Leary Brock, an inner city woman who eventually became successful, overcoming great odds, tells her story from the time she was in high school to her fiftieth birthday. Shipler narrates, apparently using Brock's version as she recalls it, as if he were there. He doesn't cite notes or corroborating sources.

In any case, these are compelling stories, about migrant fruit pickers living in squalor, about malnourished infants whose parents don't know how to care for them, about teachers who keep a supply of granola bars on hand to feed hungry children so they will be able to concentrate on the lesson, about a maze-like system that keeps poor people from getting the tools they need to break out of poverty.

The Working Poor is a passionate book that sees democracy as the solution to poverty. Those who want the system to change to meet their needs will have to vote, he says, and vote in large enough numbers so that legislators will have to listen to them. Maybe that will work, but even Shipler expresses doubts, as he acknowledges that people tend to vote their aspirations rather than their complaints.

As a relative latecomer to the Gospel (he converted on the road to Damascus about the year 35 AD), the Apostle Paul traveled to Jerusalem about fourteen years after his conversion in order to present his credentials to the original group of Apostles. He needed their imprimatur, and indeed received what he calls "the right hand of fellowship" from the movement's leaders. Recalling this trip in his letter to the Galatian believers, Paul tells us something fascinating about the first followers of Jesus. What did they require of Paul? "All they asked was that we should remember the poor" (Galatians 2:10).

Pulitzer Prize winner David Shipler has written a passionate book about the poor. One measure of a society, and certainly of Christianity, is its care for the weak, the vulnerable and the poor. Shipler focuses on a special sort of poor, not the destitute but what he calls the "working poor." These are the people we pass every day who make our American way of life possible. They clean our office buildings at night, serve us at restaurants, repair our cars, sew our designer garments, handpick our fresh produce, and so on.

The challenges this substantial part of our population face are immense, complex, and interrelated: "A run-down apartment can exacerbate a child's asthma, which leads to a call for an ambulance, which generates a medical bill that cannot be paid, which ruins a credit record, which hikes the interest rate on an auto loan, which forces the purchase of an unreliable used car, which jeopardizes a mother's punctuality at work, which limits her promotions and earning capacity, which confines her to poor housing" (p. 11).

Shipler avoids blaming the liberal left or the conservative right. Poverty is a cause of problems and the result of problems. The solution? In his final chapter he focuses on "skill and will." The resources and skill to help the poor are generally present, but what we lack, he laments, is the political will to prioritize care for the poor. In a culture which prizes and praises getting ahead, Shipler offers an eloquent call to care for those among us who have been left behind.

Five stars for this searing exploration of the causes and effects of poverty. David Shipler leaves no stone unturned in examining and explaining how various factors such as health, education, transportation, and others conspire to keep the working poor exactly where they are. Each chapter covers one factor, and includes anecdotes from real families and how they are getting by (or not). There are a few success stories in this book, but unfortunately not enough. This book should be required reading for everyone, but particularly social workers, voters, and politicians.

I found this book really upsetting. As some of us might be thinking about the next car we want to buy or how we want to remodel our kitchen, there is an invisible group in our society that works hard in low-paying jobs and still is on the verge of poverty. In this book, the author profiles such working people and illustrates to readers what is like to be part of this group from their point of view.

Even though these citizens are willing to work really hard, they simply struggle to survive and because they constantly live on the edge, a minor event can tip them over to financial ruin. They may be abused at work, underpaid, forced to work off the clock, treated like slaves, but are still trapped and have no opportunities for advancement. When they get sick and cannot afford the doctor, they may be forced to use an emergency treatment for which they are billed later on. Of course, they cannot afford the bill because if they did, they would not be using the emergency treatment in the first place. This is a really good book and I would recommend it to anyone.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

On this Thanksgiving Day, I reflected on the fact that I am part of an interdependent society, and that the work and circumstances of many people made my own life possible. "Working Poor" by David Shipler illustrates how things people take for granted, from plastic bags to clothes to carpets come to us through the hard work of low-wage workers. Shipler does not engage in sociological analysis, but gives case studies of individuals, who have to struggle to make ends meet, work long hours, and through circumstances both within and beyond their control, are left out of opportunities (i.e., college education) that are available to others. It seems to me that in our country, we need to find a balance between personal and social responsibility, and lately we have lost sense of the latter. I highly recommend this book so that we can at least have a conversation about how to better strike that balance and give more Americans better opportunities and a better quality of life.

Although much is very interesting and poignant about this book, the same old dragon raises its head: the Working Poor are lumped together as an objective species for academics and intellectuals to shake their heads over, seen as a THEM, and why it is, however subtly, THEIR fault why they are perpetually trapped in poverty, ill health, poor education, and supposedly slothful and indifferent working habits. The author hardly attacks the brutal system which forces them there and keeps them enslaved. Instead of seeing the fault lying with viciously greedy, uber-rich corporations who count on a much-exploited underclass to serve them (or be reviled and ignored by them), the blame is indicated through a Depression-era-flavored social-esque study of dirty, lazy, under-educated, feckless people with no teeth who don't study in school and won't work hard enough on the piddling jobs that they do have, somehow snarling themselves in a mesh of serfdom: if only they would bathe and go to the dentist and get good grades, and WORK HARDER, this fate won't befall them. If only they weren't so silly about how they spend money, and so afraid of taxes, and so intimidated by the authorities who counsel them. If only they didn't come from trashy families who abuse and neglect their children, or at least don't know how to raise them.

The idea that "work works" is a fallacy. The author will not address the rampant discrimination practices against race, nationality, and age. Well educated people who worked hard all their lives are suddenly dumped in institution-wide layoffs after they turn 50; and these days it is blatantly apparent that most people won't be hired for jobs unless they follow some rigid criteria of using the right trendy code words in an interview, and being youthful enough and physically attractive enough -- employers can afford to be very choosy now in this ruined economy, and know that the young always move on, don't need to stick around too long for proper health and retirement benefits, won't be a threat to the employment status quo.

Unemployment statistics are lied about and big box stores swallow up small businesses; likewise huge corporations dictate the politics, media, and lifestyles of people the world over, while monopolizing commerce and robbing people blind.

In 2016 the middle class has been almost completely eradicated -- we have the super-rich, the well-off professionals (physicians, attorneys, academic professors) a huge struggling lower class shoved there by economics despite their cultural background and education, who can no longer afford to college-educate their own children or keep up with astronomical health care costs, and the hapless Poor, blamed, distrusted, criticized and continually abused. Attempting to analyze them and change their behavior, believing that somehow they can be made to "work harder" and have a better "work ethic" is NOT the answer to the sorry state that this country and civilization at large, now threatening to be overrun by fascist dictatorships and violent demagogue leaders, has fallen to.

This was a fantastic -- and sad -- portrait of the challenges faced by the working poor. To an extent, it tells a very similar story to "Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much" by Mullainathan and Shafir. Both books chronicle the challenges of trying to work hard and play by the rules, but without the benefit of the social and economic capital many of the rest of us take for granted. A dead car battery or a sick child can be the difference between keeping or losing a job. Shipler's work, however, resonates with a deeper human touch. A skilled journalist, Shipler weaves together the stories of several families. He doesn't absolve anyone from responsibility -- indeed, many of his subjects have made poor decisions that have compounded their challenges -- but provides a very clear depiction of the often overwhelming burden that poverty places on those in work. This book, over a decade old now, should be read again, especially as we head back into a presidential election in which the poor, once again, will be debated with too little understanding and empathy.

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.

Somewhere in the middle of this book the reader is introduced to Tom and Kara. They had always struggled and sometimes hadn't always made the wisest decisions. They were pushed back as often as they were able to move ahead. Kara is diagnosed with lymphoma, and it seems as though any small gain they have made will be devoured, and their children will

face desperate times. The "safety Net' provides scant help. Their friends and community offer more. Those with as little or less then them give what they can. They offer food, wood, transportation to appointments. Kara feels overwhelmed by all this and is uneasy with their "debt". She manages to co make and collecttoys to donate he hospital's waiting room. Tom cannot help but feel their economic status influences some the doctors' treatmentdecisions. She eventually succumbs.

The Working Poor, Invisible in America tries to discover why in a land of plenty we have so many who go without. Without the very basics....food , shelter, education, health care. Those who do without are working the very jobs others say they should take. There is no doubt this is a complex question and David Shipler does not in any way say he has any of the answers. He presents a well balanced picture, and proposes some ways to make change. What he does best is place human faces

on people. The people who we see every day. Shipler identifies many of the causes of poverty, and he also is candid about the dilema business find themselves in...beholden to shareholders as well as workers. The trend to ship work overseas. The necessity to hire immigrant workers to do the work many native US citizens will no longer consider.He keeps bringing us back to the human face and the cost of the working poor. The price we all eventually pay.

Shipler takes a very one sided perspective with very little understanding of economics. There is not sufficient information about each person that he briefly interviews to reach the conclusions he seems to be leaning toward. Try Out of Poverty by Polak

Shipler takes a very one sided perspective with very little understanding of economics. There is not sufficient information about each person that he briefly interviews to reach the conclusions he seems to be leaning toward. Try Out of Poverty by Polak

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.

It is the comprehensive nature of Shipler's work that makes it so outstanding. The book is a perfectly complete telling of the "working poor" on three counts: the stories, the context, and the writing.

The stories are deep due to his persistence in interviewing the same people over several years, his follow-ups with secondary characters such as doctors and case workers, and the diversity of the narratives in terms of location, employment, and background.

He contextualizes each individual story in addition to the larger narrative with very thorough political-economic research. He never settles on simple analysis, instead explicitly opting for nuance and complexities. He drives in the point that the factors that cause and perpetuate poverty are overlapping and self-perpetuating, evading any myopic solutions.

Finally, his writing is superb. He is so sympathetic to his subjects and relates their stories to the reader with words and transitions that are heart-rending. He never turns the reader off with polemics, although he does convey frustration and disillusionment with the system.

This book really makes you think. Put aside all of your political ideas and preconceived ideas about poverty, and look at the situations for what they are. Take an unbiased look at the actual issues behind the politics.

The book is wonderfully written. He gives countless personal stories from people he has interviewed, so it almost reads like a novel. You become interested in each person he speaks of, and fascinated by their story.

I was assigned a few chapters from this book for one of my classes, but ended up reading the whole thing. Wonderful book, and I highly recommend it. It will open your mind and enrich your life.

In spite of grueling hours and brutal conditions, hard work is no guarantee of prosperity in the American economy. So writes journalist David Shipler in this exhaustive study of the folks left behind by the American economic boom. Shipler talks to factory workers in New Hampshire, farm workers in North Carolina and garment workers in California. He paints a picture of a predatory economy with little room for the unsophisticated and unskilled. This work, which was nominated for a prestigious National Book Critics' Circle Award, is ambitious in its scope and compelling in its detail. Some readers, however, might chafe at Shipler's refusal to accept either liberal or conservative formulas: after presenting ample evidence of the poor's own culpability for their plight, however partial, he blames both, an indifferent society and family dysfunction for poverty. We strongly recommend this sweeping study to employers and to anyone interested in the seemingly intractable gap between rich and poor.

Let me start by saying what I liked and appreciated about this book before I go on to say what I didn't. First of all, it's great that most of the focus has been placed on individual families and circumstances. He's not just rattling off statistics; he's actually taking you to the living rooms and workplaces of real human beings and for the most part letting them tell their own story. It is also clear that Shipler does not have a political agenda; he acknowledges the failings of both the left and right to address this issue on pretty equal terms. The author is not blaming the individuals in question entirely for their situations, nor is he completely blaming society or "the system;" rather, he shows in an extrodinarily clear and sober manner the variety of circumstances which cause poverty and which continually leave those afflicted in its grasp.

The main problem that I have with this book is that I feel it left out a lot of people and a lot of problems that could have easily been addressed. For one, most of the people in the book are urban minorities, and that seems to be where most of the focus lies. There's not a lot of emphasis on the rural poor (with the notable exception of migrant farm workers) among whom circumstances are quite different and in many ways even harder than those of the urban poor. In addition, Shipler is constantly noting the lack of education among poor people but doesn't ever mention the fact that ever-rising and insane tuition costs prevent many perfectly capable *middle-class* people of getting to college in the first place, thus rendering them just as poor as the people who started out that way. (Financial aid actually favors the very poor, and the middle class are often left in the limbo of "too much income to qualify, not enough money to pay out of pocket" and the only way to go is through financially crippling student loans.)

I also wanted to say something about the Earned Income Credit, because it is something that Shipler thoroughly sings the praises of throughout the book. First of all, it's not that easy to get it. As a personal example, from 1999-2005, even though I made hardly any money and should have qualified, I did not because I was under 25 (a stipulation that Shipler neglects to mention.) This year, I am 25, but I still did not qualify because I had gotten married. (Which is another big issue Shipler neglects to mention: the marriage penalty.) If you are married you have to make an absurdly low amount of money to qualify, so if you both work full time like good Americans without taking any other government money (which you wouldn't qualify for anyway unless you have children), even if you both make minimun wage and are barely scraping by, you still wouldn't qualify. So it's really not the panacea that he makes it out to be.

There are a lot of other relevant issues that Shipler never brings up. For example, why does someone who makes $15,000 per year have to pay the same percentage of their income to Social Security as someone who makes $75,000 per year? What about all those people on Social Security, anyway? Why are people without health insurance forced to pay for someone else's Medicare? Why doesn't a high school diploma mean anything anymore? There are a billion questions that, as a poor person, I wanted answers to, which is the very reason I bought this book. But there is so much emphasis in here about one very specific type of poor person (urban minority female with way too many children) who also happens to be the most stereotypical kind of poor person, without giving everyone else who is struggling to survive a very equal voice. But like I said at the beginning, this book is a good starting point. If you are poor, or have ever been poor, you may not get as much out of it as a wealthier person. If you have a lot of money or are otherwise quite comfortable financially, please read this book. It may not give you the entire picture of poverty in America, but it will put a real human face on the problem.

David K. Shipler tackles this difficult subject with compassion and honesty. This is not one of those books that is boring to read, with endless facts and figures. Shipler engages his readers with his conversational style of writing. He introduces us to some of the working poor, tells us of their hardships and their victories.

Most people are not poor because they are stupid or lazy. Many of us, in fact, are one bad choice or one serious illness away from being part of the working poor. This book sheds light on a subject that has too long been swept under the carpet. I believe everyone in the U.S. should read this one.

This book is much more high-brow and academic than say Nickle and Dimed or Jonathan Kozol's books. However, what I appreciated most was the author's refusal to blame either Conservatives or Liberals for the current state of poverty in the country. (Kozol's books, by contrast, are heavily left-leaning.) Shipler actually interviewed some of the employers of poor people, an interesting side of the equation that is usually ignored by liberal writers. The only thing I disagree with is his views on cable TV--this made me very angry. Cable TV is a luxury item! I sure never had it growing up. I don't think people who are scraping up money for food and rent should be wasting $50 or more a month on cable. I don't buy the author's argument that poor people would be cut off from society without cable. What BS. Other than that, I liked the book. I agree with the author that poverty stems from both environmental and innate factors, some factors the poor can control but many they cannot.

The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler is nowhere near as dry as one might expect from the title. It is a very readable analysis of the many complex issues facing the "working poor" in America. The author takes a relatively even-handed approach politically, but he does not fail to let you know what he thinks about various policies, using real life stories from the perspective of employees, employers in the private and public sector to illustrate his points. Rather than being all about how 'America is a land of opportunities if you only try hard enough' or 'the poor are oppressed; there's nothing anyone can do,' Shipler strikes a balance. He recognizes that there is never a one-size-fits-all approach, and that there are many parties with a stake in the policy process. In a society where there is so often a rush to judgment and a desire for simple solutions, Shipler takes the time to explore the different pieces of the puzzles, stripping each back as if peeling an onion... And ironically, the deeper in he takes you, the more of a big picture you see.
I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone who seeks to understand the class system of the United States.

In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, Shipler (2004) delivers candid insights from a vulnerable population underrepresented in the mainstream media. He illustrates how necessity overrides any type of luxury in the lower socioeconomic rungs. Basic survival outweighs physical or mental health, among other important requisites, and the predicament of poverty consumes those afflicted. Thus, an intricate cycle is perpetuated that results in more questions than ideas for solving. Shipler conveys a myriad of perspectives without subjecting ideological or political agendas onto the reader. No pointing of fingers occurs, but rather a walk through individual case examples layered with direct quotes that start sounding more and more alike regardless of race or geographic location. He encourages everyone to meander outside their creature comfort zones and consider current societal realities.
Successful programs for the poor are described related to parenting and work training; however, overarching details of welfare's pitfalls detracts from the hopeful interventions. Members of the middle-class are represented as both willing and unwilling participants in the daily lives of those living in poverty. Some of the interactions with employers, supervisors, teachers, and social workers prove to be meaningful and others deleterious. Living with a sense of community and belonging where human kindness is exhibited grants some the necessary boost to survive. Overall, the book manifests harsh truths while reaffirming humanity. Awareness is the fundamental principle provided by Shipler. Essential implications for policy makers and corporate America abound.
Four stars out of five are awarded for the impartial, vivid depiction of poverty. An organized summary of workable programs along with outcomes data and first-hand accounts could help better serve poverty and fuel reform initiatives. The battle against poverty does not
enjoy simple solutions as Shipler recognizes and although awareness is indispensable, clarifying societal roles with specific expectations is paramount. Humanizing poverty, turning a statistic into a face, is the invaluable contribution Shipler accomplished with The Working Poor: Invisible in America. If a readiness to embrace actuality exists, then this is the read for you. And maybe, as it has achieved for this reader, a desire for resolve will invoke action.

...is how Shipler wrote this book. He talked to working poor all over America, in cities and in rural areas. He talked to their teachers, counselors, doctors, lawyers, bosses and social workers.

He gives an even-handed portrait of what causes and maintains poverty (or near-poverty, which in some ways, may be more maddening).

It's not a quick read, but then, it probably shouldn't be. It's better to read the book, put it down and think and then return to it.

"An inconvenience to an affluent family -- minor car trouble, a brief illness, disrupted child care -- is a crisis to them, for it can threaten their ability to stay employed. They spend everything and save nothing. They are always behind on their bills. They have miniscule bank accounts or none at all, and so pay more fees and higher interest rates than more secure Americans."

"Each person's life is the mixed product of bad choices and bad fortune, of roads not taken and roads cut off by the accident of birth or circumstance."

There have been a number of important books recently on the American working poor, notably Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed," Shulman's "Betrayal of Work," and now Shipler's "The working poor". In many ways, Shipler's is the most comprehensive of the three. He does a superb job blending ethnographic and interview material with legal and sociological research, and paints a compelling picture of poverty as a web of interlocking causes and effects that is deceptively easy to fall into and difficult to struggle free from. In many ways, the most remarkable thing about the book is Shipler's ability to see and portray the same situation from a variety of perspectives: welfare-to-work employment incentive programs from the eyes of both employer and employee, or drug rehabilitation from the eyes of both addict and rehab center worker. And it's not a partisan book: Shipler shows how there's never just one direction to point the finger of blame, and how the web has to be attacked from more than one direction to truly be cut and free those who are ensnared.

Poverty is a marginalization of good and decent people. It is about a lack of money, and it is about far more. It is also about the myth that if one works hard that one will not be poor. In fact, most persons who are poor do work hard. Most hard work is rewarded at a low level of pay because our system rewards the employer who pays at the lowest level that can be achieved.

The author discusses the problem of Asthma in America caused primarily by the poor living in cities and in poor housing. He also discusses malnutrition in America.

The more money we invest in our children, the lesser amount of money we will need to invest in prisons. More than that, if we will reduce the poverty of millions of children then we will have a much more wonderful society in which to live. Our society works in part like a chain-link fence. That is, the overall quality of our society is no better than the weakest link in our "chain-link fence" of security for our citizens.

This should be required reading for everyone in this country. This book does what "Nickle and Dimed" could only dream of doing. This is not some man just trying on poverty to see how it feels. Shipler gets down to the bare bones of poverty and details the web of causes and effects. Speaking as someone that's been to hell and back when it comes to poverty this book was spot on in detailing the vast array of circumstances that all rely on and influence each other. He does well to point out that poverty is a mix of bad circumstances and bad choices and that it's all a painful cycle. He also does a great job at illustrating the way the working poor live not only paycheck to paycheck, but crisis to crisis and disconnect notice to disconnect notice.

Not only does Shipler highlight all the gritty details of the life of the working poor he outlines very reasonable and more importantly POSSIBLE solutions to combat poverty. His solutions are more common sense and can be done if everyone gets on board to recognize the problem and agree to work on solving it.

We will never get rid of poverty, some people will always make the negative choices that keep them poor. But there is no excuse for such a wealthy country to build it's empire on the backs of the poor and then refuse to let them in the door.

Read this book, then pass it on. You will learn more than you ever thought you could about the people that you never thought to notice.

The author gives very good (and well-written) case studies and analyzes the situations of several working poor and their families. Gave me a better appreciation for the tangle of issues families 'living on the edge' face. I was looking forward to some concrete suggestions for solving portions of the constellation of problems . . . he did offer a few, but on the whole, his answer was to 'elect Democrats.' Huh. Like one political party or another is the answer. Worth reading, until the last chapter, but don't expect to see any serious ideas for making things better. On the other hand, if it were easy or cheap, it would have been handled already.

Shipler only touches on the real problems with workers in America but does perform a valuable service in doing so.

Take someone working at a major retail chain,say a Home Depot or Walmart.. What is it like working for such a firm?

For one thing, longevity in employee base is not preferred. Turnover needs to be high to keep wages low, so enormous pressure is brought in the form of 'metrics','quality', 'customer management' and whatever politically correct term is used. Workers are continually threatened with the loss of their job 'just around the corner' as sales and revenue ALWAYS falls short of the mark.Many times large firms such as these exploit desperate workers in a bad economy,capitalizing on intellectual capital as an intangible asset applied to an undervalued stock for those in the know. Sometimes in big firms there is a systematic institutional harassment that goes on to ensure proper 'attrition' in employee base. Because management decides to run extremely low staffing while maintaining exceptionally high productivity standards, employees are put into a situation to fail in the eyes of the customer, who rarely has direct contact with the real authority which allocates resources to provide them with goods and services. In large firms,' innovation', "thinking outside the box" and so on are encouraged but when it is done and expressed those individuals are penalized or given token symbols of appreciation.

Among large firms which develop patents, many times the principal scientist(s)are only symbolically rewarded,stifling invention and innovation.One Fortune 500 company was known for giving a principal innovator a plaque plus $250.00 for an invention which might yield for the corporation millions in the fairly short term.

Some corporations, if a woman files a sexual harassment complaint, she is pressured to settle and sign a secrecy agreement which includes never being able to work for that company again.

Other large corporatons are shells for government agendas pushed into the economy as the workings of simply a large,powerful business entity.

This was an excellent book. A real eye opener into a whole other world. I'm giving it to my college student daughter, to make sure that she graduates. The last book that inspired me in the same way was Barbara Ehrenreich's Nine to Five. This is journalism at its best, excellent writing, excellent research. I only hope that its message gets through.

I requested this book from the library after seeing an episode of Nightline with Ted Koppel.
This book really does make you stop and think about how different our lives really are in America. I hate to admit this, but I usually don't pay too much attention to the people who are on the edge of poverty, working the jobs that most of us will never have to work. Now, when I go to the fast food window or to a Kmart or Walmart, I realize that many of these workers are not getting paid well, and probably cannot even afford to shop at the stores they work in, or buy food at the fast food place either.
I'm not the best writer, but please take a look at this book if you get the chance. Maybe it will help you to understand what these people are going through.

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...

Like Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, this book will make you think twice and notice the cashier who rings up your purchase at Walmart, the worker who bags your Whopper at the local Burger King, the laborer who picks your vegetables, and all sorts of other people who make our lives more comfortable and convenient, but live every day on the edge of hunger and homelessness. While conservatives are eager to feed us soundbites about the laziness and dishonesty of those on welfare, this book puts a face on a problem that impacts all of us through stories of real people and families, and delves deeply into the social causes and real costs of poverty. Highly recommended to anyone who has ever taken a full stomach and a warm, safe home for granted.

This is a pretty long book, but the storytelling and people we meet make it an enjoyable and engaging read. I especially appreciate the author's summary and his thoughtful exploration of ways to combat and alleviate poverty. No easy answers, but a lot of compassion. I still think about it daily.

Shipler does an excellent job of describing how many of the working poor are doing "everything right" according to the American Dream, but still failing to make even a living wage.
I know, because I am caught in that trap. I went to school, and educated myself, because the public school was a waste. I earned excellent grades, and then went to the university, working my way through but still ending up with thousands of dollars in debt. I am handicapped by student loans that ammount to over twice my yearly income. If I declared bankruptcy, and paid the price of ten years of worse than no credit (which I would happily do), I would STILL owe all of these student loans - which are the vast majority of my debt.
My Bachelor's degree hasn't helped me get a single job. Instead, I have relied upon the skills I learned while working as a secretary and a tutor in college. I can't get into graduate school because I have too many college loans already (and one private loan, held by my university, which is also holding my official transcripts until I pay them off - despite the fact that with that transcript, I could get a better paying, untaxed job in Saudi Arabia...)
I work two jobs, for a total of 51 hours a week. I take classes at the local community college (the university costs too much) to keep myself from getting too depressed, and to improve my qualifications if I am ever able to afford to go on for a graduate degree. I do not have health insurance, I do not have dental insurance, I do not have eye insurance. I do not watch television, since I simply do not have the time.
I have a 5-year old vehicle that is in desperate need of maintenance. I live in a friend's house, renting a room. My idea of a luxury is to take myself out to dinner once a month (especially since I am saving up to get my divorce).
I am not precisely living in the lap of luxury, as the neo-con types repeatedly portray the working poor. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I went to buy "new" clothing (as oppossed to Goodwill), or the last time I bought an alcoholic beverage (probably back in college).
THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN. That goes for the educational system, the social welfare system, and the political system (since politicians never listen to anyone without sufficient money to get an appointment). And I (among many others) am tired of treading water, with no hope for "rescue" or any chance to help myself in sight.

A glance at the back dust cover is not promising. Yet Shipler's book deserves a read. The profiles are well written, informative, varied, exhaustive, complex and illustrative. Compassion for the subjects is elicited and deserved. Some subjects struggle and do get by, if barely, due more to informal charity and kinship than by government (anti-)poverty programs. Their stories are especially noteworthy. Shipler's meticulous candor supplants Ehrenreich's solipsistic book, "Nickled and dimed in America." Praised for its vicarious, first-hand account of other people's poverty, "Dimed" had no basis for useful insight. The life of poverty is no game, no short-term social experiment. Not pretending to be poor, Shipler is much more thorough; his first-hand journalistic research covers years, not months. He is objective and not judgmental yet his compassion shines through his words.
Shipler uses Churchill's description of democracy as the worst form of government to explain why capitalism is the worst form of economic policy - except when compared to all others that have been tried from time to time. A wise analogy. Yet the final analysis and public policy recommendations are difficult to make or to decipher. Shipler acknowledges that the major cause of poverty can be attributed to a single source: bad personal choices. Of course, no one chooses to be poor (some journalists excepted), but people repeatedly make independent, self-serving or selfish, short-sighted, unfortunate choices, including walking away from the mother or father of their children, from their families, from educational opportunities, from their religious values, and from disciplined work habits. And they walk all too easily into a trap: teenage pregnancy, drug and domestic abuse, and endless hours in front of the television. As Shipler notes, what most poor Americans seem to have in common is high tv cable bills. Too often, government fails in its efforts to help. Despite the excessively complicated-to-claim earned income tax credit, Uncle Sam still takes too much of poor people's income in regressive, work-discouraging social security taxes and from employers by raising the cost to find, train, retain, and motivate ill-educated workers. And then the government tempts the poor with slickly marketed Ponzi schemes in the form of state lotteries, realizing the addictive nature of these rip offs that prey upon the poor. And state schools expend $10,000, even $12,000, per pupil and produce illiterates with no job skills. Even health care is a form of governmental plague. Prevention earns little or no attention or funding from bureaucrats while cures and caring for the horrible consequences of poor nutritional and lifestyle habits are prohibitively expensive when it is available (more often than critics suggest), and leaving health care providers with exhorbitant malpractice insurance whose elimination alone could pay for health care for the poor. There are too many social and governmental barriers to and disincentives for making good choices and taking personal responsibility.
In Shipler's rich "Working poor," you learn a lot about the poor. You just don't learn how to help reduce poverty.

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."

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.

Admirable class analysis of the state of the working poor, beyond the slogans of the market miracle: the facts of the case two centuries after the Industrial Revolution. It seems that the American system will burn a hole in the Ozone before it solves its basic problem, one deteriorating in the 'years gone by' of the neo-liberal degeneration generation. One problem is that the Captains of Industry just don't get it, and after a while I get suspicious: they want it that way. I told you so, saith the Big M.

The Working Poor: Invisible in America gives you a personal outlook on how many Americans live there lives in the lower class. It opens your eyes and shows that every little person counts. This gives you a whole new respect of the people who scan your groceries or the people that let you have it your way at Burger King. David Shipler gives you a real life story and breaks down the struggles and hardships that the lower working class must go through day in and day out just to get by in society where the most important people are over looked. This book deserves to be read not just to here about poor people struggling but to understand how many Americans have to survive in the life of poverty.

I loved this book and feel that EVERY American should read it. I do agree with the reviewer that gave it 10 stars. This is an outstanding body of work. OUCH!!! I consider myself a "righty" more than a "lefty" and to be honest, this book made me think LONG and HARD. Read it!!!!!
Dr. Michael L. Johnson author of "What Do You Do When the Medications Don't Work?--A Non-Drug Treatment of Dizziness, Migraine Headaches, Fibromyalgia, and Other Chronic Conditions".

This is a book everyone in America should read. It shows many sides of the poverty issue. It does get confusing sometimes with which individual she is talking about but is easy, interesting reading.

This is a great book from the standpoint of someone with serious credibility substantiating the difficulties faced by the majority of Americans.

I have been homeless after being laid-off,only later to be underemployed even after getting a usable college degree,working very hard and "doing the right things" as everyone around me encouraged me in these things.Some might call me a loser, but i even went so far as to write letters to dozens of employers offering to work for free in exchange for a chance to upgrade my skills and get a positive letter of recommendation- no one gave me a chance even then.

To add to Ms. Ehrenreich's observations:

1) There are very few safety nets in America,contrary to popular belief. If you get to the point I was, you will learn for yourself.

2)In working for one major retailer EVERYONE knows(not Walmart) some of my own experience:

a) after spending 3 hours typing 10 pages of constructive ideas to improve business for customers and employees( while increasing profitability )on my own time and sending them to corporate, all I received back was essentially emails saying- "Who are you?"/"Why do you care"?/"Stop bugging us"

b)when telling a junior that i worked hard to ensure he succeeds, the response was "it doesn't matter"-that manager was promoted

c) when informing another junior manager that customers were leaving angry because we could not fulfill basic customer service from being short-staffed, the manager responded-"no problem- they'll be back"

d)another full-fledged manager,when told certain tasks didn't get done because there was not enough staff and everyone was doing the equivalent work of 2-3 people, responded- "what is the maximum range of an excuse"- that manager by the way, being a new member of America's wealthiest

e)having wages that might qualify as below poverty level and working very very hard just for that, i approached my manager asking for overtime or help as I was going to be homeless and could not afford the rents in the area, that manager went on to cut any overtime available to me

The author presents an even handed (neither bleeding heart liberal nor heartless conservative) view of the issues that confront and trap people in the minimum wage and low hourly rate jobs. He illuminates the complex relationship between low wages, health, life choices, family structure, and work habits that thwart the "American Dream" for these people. I came to understand why "single shot" private and public sector initiatives fail to make a material dent on the problem of "near poverty" level workers.

I found Working Poor to be well-researched, and I prefer it's tone to Nickel and Dimed. Shipler was thorough and balanced in his view of the poor in America. In the various stories, Shipler takes us into the psyche of the "working poor", showing the different circumstances that allowed these individuals to remain, or get into poverty.

The stories of America's working poor are enough to make you cry at times - the utter helplessness in which many of us exist every day. It's sad that something as mundane as "money" has such a real effect on how we live our lives - at the top of the money food chain and at the bottom.

Fascinating.

I loved the book "Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America," by Barbara Ehrenreich, and after seeing her blurb on the cover I hoped this book would be similar. While I agree that the minimum wage in the U.S. is woefully inadequate, I found Shipler's tone to be very preachy; in many of the passages, he writes about "privileged homes," as if people who make a good living have something to be ashamed of. I found many of the people profiled in the book to be at least somewhat responsible for their own situations; if you don't earn a high school diploma, blow your wages on drugs, and have 4 kids before you are 21 years old, chances are you will live below the poverty line. A little too bleeding-heart for my taste... I would recommend Ehrenreich's book instead of this one.

The author has a fantastic ability to draw us into the lives of some of America's most destitute workers. He is very passionate about understanding their plight and offering them hope. Unfortunately, his plan of hope is to engage the government to place even more restrictions on private industry and tax them more than ever before. How in the world is that going to help things? That is exactly why so many of our jobs are leaving this country and heading to Asia, Europe, and even Africa. Companies cannot afford the enormous taxes and restrictions, certainly they can afford to pay American workers more than $6-7 per hour, but only if they are not required to meet every federal and state standard that's out there! Good book but the author forgets that companies are trying to make a profit in a society that punishes the rich and robs the poor. I have never earned more than $6 an hour, and though I hate this, I don't blame individual companies for it, I blame too much government involvement in the private affairs of businesses nationwide!

I read this book because of all the great reviews and because I really loved Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed.

This book is told in a third person narrative and basically recites several stories of poor Americans and how they live each day. Of course, each character has a sob story. Basically, each story starts with a character with a bad childhood, living with parents who are also living in poverty, are uneducated and never get a chance to leave and expand their horizons. And of course, the cycle repeats with their children and on and on. While I don't mean to belittle their situations, I just find a recitation of each person's life to not be helpful.

I liked Nickel and Dimed a lot because Barbara herself attempted to make a living while taking a minimun paid job. She tried to relate or experience what the poor experienced. Her experience made me feel like I was experiencing each situation with her.

This book on the other hand is just a bunch of stories of poor people. While some of the story is interesting, it can get a bit preachy and whiney at times. Author blames the system and argues that no matter how hard the poor try, they are rarely able to get themselves out of poverty and into a better situation.

There's nothing new or special about this book, so I gave it two stars because it's well researched but the stories themselves get repetitive and boring.

Once again we are shown painfully, capitalisms inherent defects which everyone "hears" but keeps turning the blind idealogical eye too because they benefit from opressing the poor: The desire for cheap labour so that the middle class and rich can have more money to increase their already well off standard of living, and capitalisms inherent conflict between enriching one class through oppressing and devaluing the work of other classes. This inherent class conflict as the result of competition, the profit motive and the devaluation of certain types of work when there are fixed, unalterable costs of living is the most abhorrent feature of the capitalist free market systems. There is no way out of poverty for these people unless you redistribute the wealth using government or come up with a new tiered socio-economic system completely that's not based on pure free market principles. We all desire that people live in enough economic security while working so they don't have to turn to crime, or disturb the peace because they have played by the rules and gotten screwed over by businesses. Private corporations and most big businesses want only one thing: Cheap labour to enrich the skilled workers the depend on and the already wealthy elite, if they could they would repeal most of the worker protection laws in their home countries to farm people as wage slaves for cheap labour to enrich themselves.

All that wealth comes from displacing the wealth of others it doesn't magically come out of thin air and the fact that people blindly follow their idealogy wherever it leads without thinking through the capitalistic profit motive and controlling costs (read: The catch-22 of opressing workers by keeping their wages stagnant as inflation rises, while increasing prises and gaining profits).

I especially liked the part about the college graduate struggling with student loan debt and never getting any better job from the education. That's a story the mainstream press, as well as politicians are ignoring.
Think about that--- having all that debt, believing what they tell you about education getting you ahead, and it doesn't. Then you can't even file bankruptcy on it anymore even though the top 15 bankruptcy filers are in the 100s of millions of dollars.
It's a real Dickens scenario.

Shipler reveals the truth regarding the conditions that "the working poor in America" are facing each day. Barely surviving, with few resources, this book is an outstanding account of the "real" America, thereby eliminating the faded American dream. In its place is poverty among the majority of middle America, with facts and suggestions for how to turn it around. A truly eye opening book.

This book, at somewhat of a more superficial level, reminds me of Pierre Bourdieu's 1990 narrative sociology of hard lives in France and Chicago, The Weight of the World.

What's most interesting about the pathologies narrated is that they are shared by the middle and upper middle classes in America, but become much more consequential when the money isn't there.

Of course, each pathology has to be narrated in its own unique context. Tolstoy started the Karenina famously by saying "All happy families are happy alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way".

Both sides of this dictum, which was at best a snappy way of starting a good book, can be interrogated. Part of the Weight of the World on people (such as my fellow students at Roosevelt University in Chicago) who start with silent disadvantages is that they learn not to narrate their lives with any justice.

This is because to do so in a dysfunctional family is often to get whacked.

In drug and alcohol rehab, which we see in Shipler is where welfare to work must often start, language STARTS with the absolute requirement for a true recognition of what Marx described as one's relations to one's fellow man in his purple passage "all that is solid melts into air".

But then, in computer classes and classes in resume writing, the Clintonian compromise with an uncompromising Republican class war changes this, and suddenly, the narrative becomes highly structured.

As Shipler points out, it becomes a narrative entirely concerned with satisfying naturalized employer needs.

Shipler gives a telling example. Physicians, who spot serious childhood illnesses, almost never think to call the mother's supervisor at work to ask that accomodations be made because excessively privatized health care makes the physician "think like a manager and not a physician"...in a society in which members of professional guilds outside the legal profession (and to an extent within it) are increasingly encouraged to subordinate their professional judgement to "thinking like a manager"...a rather unpleasant sort of chap, at the limit: rather something out of Dickens, forever making nasty little calculations.

Thus "thinking like a manager" means the physician will have internalized a mental "block" in which the job arrangements of a poor mother are assumed to be absolutes, and unquestionable. The block of course has a very good reason, and this is the resurgence of the legal doctrine of employment at will, which since the 1980s has been used pretty much without mercy on lower-level employees.

Shipler is a thoughtful supporter of the Great Bubba and his Missouri Compromise with forces that since Reagan are as Uncompromising as the slave-owner South (and whose avatars are generally silent about their spiritual and at times physical inheritances from antebellum arrangements).

The problem for Shipler is that untangling arrangements at once partly benign, partly pathological, and in all cases intertwined is difficult social re-engineering in a society where the Uncomprising forces have greatly benefited from them.

Furthermore, nobody can call a work ethic, the willingness to get up and go, and wage labor an agreement with death and a covenant with hell, as did Garrison refer to the slaveowner's Constitution. Quite the opposite: progressive forces in Abolition times thought precisely as do modern Republican apologists.

They believed in the American dream of salvation through wage labor and saving money, as does Shipler: as does Bill Clinton. But where anti-slavery's simplicity of opposition meant that it escaped being an ideology, support for the eternal verities of work and save is not support for anything simple.

I mean, there is in my experience work like a dog, and blue one's hard earned dollars like a sailor in port: just because you work you don't have to save (although it's impossible to save if you don't work, unless you steal). Many of Shipler's poor remain poor because of odious lending arrangements in a society which has forgot the evils of usury. Others remain poor because they, like Sir John Falstaff, don't think sack and sugar a fault.

But nearly all remain poor because of a Gestalt, in which Shylock, sack and sugar combine. Their personal biographies (as Bourdieu also relates) are saturated with post-modern complexities and puzzlements.

Bourdieu's elder French men and women made decent lives for themselves in France of the 1950s. They joined the Communist party *sans peur*...which then taught them an interesting, but terribly real work ethic: since they were workers, enmeshed in a doomed system, it was their dignity, in nearly all cases, to show up on time, *en masse*, and work hard if only to frighten the bosses with a show of strength.

But as happened in the USA, where Vietnam and the 1960s intervened in the same way in France, where Algeria, Vietnam and the French experience of the 1960s intervened, resistance, for the children and grandchildren became what Eric Hobsbawm called "the anarchism of the lower middle class", a disempowering brew of passive aggression, drug and alcohol abuse, and cynicism.

The result today is that the lower middle, working and lumpen classes can't speak of their own dignity without being immediately suspected, in rehab, computer classes, and resume-writing classes, of a Bad Attitude and a desire to return to the Dreamtime of the 1960s.

The Hobbesianism, this war of all against all, pervades American, and American-influenced, society from top to bottom, and as a result, it's become a strange society of monads who counsel each other to Look Out for Number One.

In this explicit Hobbesianism, we're all Number One, but the trouble is paradoxically that which Orwell saw in Communism. Some of us, like Donald Trump, are more Number One than others and (in a regression to theological barbarism) one gains indulgences in the resulting foofaraw by serving more successful men.

Thus the business book advises a paradoxical, almost Buddhist path, to personal empowerment: the celebration of a successful self who in reality is another, more polished version of one's sweating self.

From top to bottom in American society, this has created mass delusion and the preconditions for reproduction of the same pathologies Shipler describes: anomie, isolation, aliteracy, cynicism and despair.

Capitalist "shock therapy" cured the Communist forms of these pathologies in those countries like Poland and the Czech Republic (for Communism as ideology naturalizes nonsense just as fast, if not faster, than capitalism as ideology). But no exogenous shock seems to be in prospect for capitalism unless Space Monsters from the Planet Zork arrive.

Capitalism, interpreted as the ideological exclusion of solidarity and in signal cases elementary acts of kindness, may be at this point an addiction in the West. In the epistemological crisis described by David Caute (in Critical Psychiatry) characteristic of the lower middle class family, we may need to marketize relations in preference to actually judging ourselves and others: to keep the world at arm's length.

Hopefully, this process has an end point.

While in France, I saw a French review of this book which in French shed new light on what's hidden in America: for the French writer spoke of "single mothers" as "meres celibataires".

To so speak of single mothers illuminates their flat situation with sudden light and shadow, for the Latinate language images them as an order of nuns, "chanting cold hymns to the moon".

It implies that single motherhood is less, as is described by the grim Puritan divine, a product of "choices" in an America in which we're always making choices later used against us, than a guild or a calling, in a Middle Ages unexperienced in America...where the single mother takes upon herself the inability of the patriarch to change a nappy or send a child support check.

But for the same reason the physician doesn't pick up the phone and yell at the uncaring boss, single mothers chant cold hymns to the moon on the bus to Walmart at 3:00 AM, and somewhere else no dinner is ever thrown, with beer and lap dancing, for men who've paid their child support.

The situation is occult in Adorno's naturalized sense, for lucky and successful people in America have been as it were possessed by a daemon. This daemon (whose spelling I make antiquarian to avoid any confusion with theological fantasy) has instructed his adepts never, on pain of exclusion from bien-pensance, to emotionally overtip the help, in the sense of ever recognizing that over and above a paycheck, the working poor are doing us a favor.

We even train ourselves never to think we're doing anyone any favors by working, because in the hegemonic ideology (so there: take that) the equation has to come out to zero: the pay we get is what we deserve, and, it's best to megaconsume (whether in the short term Yuppie sense, or the longer term, whee let's buy more house than we can afford, sense) than to show solidarity with fellow workers or even demand psychic satisfaction.

Well, if even the Shortest American in the World, Robert Reich of Harvard could not even for one minute ask himself WHY Republicans can't compromise, don't compromise and don't have to compromise, why friend Reich and Bubba can't THEORIZE, then even Hilary's 2008 nomination won't work. We'll wake up as in Groundhog Day, to find that the election was stolen from Hilary despite exit polls showing a Hilary landslide.

As antiphilosophical Americans (insert appropriate reference to Tocqueville right here, as soon as I get around to actualy reading that prolix Frog), we don't think there is any such thing as Objective Spirit, and the Germans who used to discuss such nonsense over beer and sausage on Chicago's Lincoln Avenue are now silenced.

But what Objective Spirit MEANS is that we have no control whatsoever over a political Groundhog Day, in which cockroach exterminators drown what's left of any welfare state in the bathtub and in which our voices for peace and economic justice have no air: in which like spacemen we scream in silence.

It was at this point that the late Derrida, in Specters of Marx, had to go around the bend, and start speaking of ghosts. We know a slave when we see one, dodging the ice on the Ohio while we cheer him on in the old play.

But precisely as the static Weight of the World is in fact silently borne, we realize that this World Trade Center is all we have. Materially, like Hamlet in Act One, we tend sadly only to reproduction of intolerable lives. It takes an exogenous, ectomorphic event such as Dad cap a pie on the battlements to make us imagine negative, and positive possibility.

But absent this, we have Bill Murray in Groundhog day, punctured only by what old Tom Eliot heard in The Waste Land: murmurs of maternal lamentation, Erde-Kundry (whom none could call fair) sighing under the cumulative weight.

We'll wake up to find that the American electoral system, superstructure as to its base, in fact is fair in that it transmits not what we know, what we think we want, but our darkest and innermost Fear and Loathing, expressed in the very idea that when we've learned not to cut ourselves a break, we're damned if we'll cut dem welfare queens, dem bums, a break.

The code was tweaked for a Neil Bush win? What else is new? Shipler's working poor fight a rigged system, rigged today using high technology which has become a second nature, and in the next installment, the bien-pensants will learn once and for all that Bush v Gore was only the first shot. They can "vote" for the next multimillionaire Democrat until they are blue in the face, but in their heart they want what's delivered to their mortgaged door by the wretched of the earth.

The Weight of the World, Allen Ginsberg's "Trees! Clocks! Radios! Tons!" is known only to the structural engineer as frozen energy, frozen anger, and bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon. The Working Poor, of course, know that their situation is never absolute, like slavery: my Mom's loyal maid knew instinctively that they were both mistress and servant, and coequal servants to my Dad's absolute need for a quiet, upper middle class, home (as compared to the usual *menage* of screaming wife, hounded husband, and noisy kids).

I conclude (aintcha glad I wrap it up) that we are ALL working poor: like Bob Marley said, we bellyful (maybe) but we hungry. But this should be a call to arms and to the strong compassion of Marianne, or forgotten Molly. When the storm breaks, it will be a mighty storm.

In this book, David Shipler addressed many topics which are often undiscussed in American society. His non-judgmental assessment of the personal & institutional causes perpetuating working-class poverty was phenomenal. The narratives he used supplemented the usual facts and figures.

We all must see and understand the "other" america......Why are

they hidden from our view. We can't correct an evil if we deny

its existence/...read..read..read..write..write..write..vote !!

David K. Shipler did an outstanding job bringing the harsh and saddening reality of what the lives are like for the `working poor' in America. Shipler makes wonderful recommendations for higher wages so people can actually survive, redistribution of funds for schools so all children have the chance for receiving the education they deserve, as well as stating the position of responsibility on society as a whole to work together for the common good of all.
This book brings a brutal awakening for anyone who believes in the `American Dream' as it so clearly shows that this land is all too filled with people turning the other way when someone is in need.
I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who is in a position to make positive and lasting change in society, as well as for those who are in a better position, so you can see if there is a difference you can make.
This book brings out the truth with vital recommendations for direly needed changes, which is why I recommend it as a must read for all.
Barbara Rose, author of "Stop Being the String Along: A Relationship Guide to Being THE ONE" and 'If God Was Like Man'
Editor of inspire! magazine