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"American Dream" Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed:On Not getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist with a PhD in biology who went under cover to work with the low wage workers of the blue collar work force as a waitress, cleaning woman, nursing home assistant, and Wal-Mart employee, in researching Nickel and Dimed: By Not Getting By in America, her best-selling investigation into the lives of the thirty percent of the US work force who work for eight dollars an hour or less~ in particular the four million women who were shoved back into the workplace by the welfare reform. In the spirit of science, she decided on certain rules and parameters for her undercover work. First she could not fall back on any skills derived from her education. Second she had to take the highest paying job that was offered to her and try to do her best to hold it. And finally she had to take the cheapest accommodations she could find. Although she tried to stick to these rules, all of them were broken or bent at some point. In Key West, where she began the project in the l...

Posted by: Anthony Pacella

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