A review by princessrobotiv
The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler

4.0

The Working Poor is one of my longest outstanding reviews, and in the interest of continuing my "review every book" streak, I'm going to hop back in time and say a few things. My remembrance has dulled slightly, but I still had a bunch of quotes saved, so this review will be heavy on extracts with minor commentary from me. (This is why writing reviews soon after reading is critical -_- ).

Overall, my impressions were very favorable. Shipler approached this topic with a great deal of empathy, but also didn't shy from presenting the people who participated in his (I believe decades-spanning) study in an unfavorable light. The biggest strength of this book is its nuance. Having grown up relatively poor myself, I'm hyper-aware of the reductive arguments surrounding poverty in America. So often, people want to ascribe a person's poverty on choices that particular person has made, especially if those choices run contrary to the judger's own ideology or, perhaps, their own morality:

But the American Myth also provides a means of laying blame. In the Puritan legacy, hard work is not merely practical but also moral; its absence suggests an ethical lapse. A harsh logic dictates a hard judgment: If a person's diligent work leads to prosperity, if work is a moral virtue, and if anyone in the society can attain prosperity through work, then the failure to do so is a fall from righteousness. The marketplace is the fair and final judge; a low wage is somehow the worker's fault, for it simply reflects the low value of his labor. In the American atmosphere, poverty has always carried a whiff of sinfulness.

Shipler does not allow for this type of thinking. His main argument is that poverty is a part of a highly-complex system, each part inextricably entwined with the other:

As the people in these pages show, working poverty is a constellation of difficulties that magnify one another: 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 the lack of health insurance but also the lack of healthy households. The villains are not just exploitative employers but also incapable employees, not just overworked teachers but also defeated and unruly pupils, not just bureaucrats who cheat the poor but also the poor who cheat themselves. The troubles run strongly along both macro and micro levels, as systemic problems in the structure of political and economic power, and as individual problems in personal and family life. All of the problems have to be attacked at once.

There are also candid discussions regarding wage disparity, which examine common arguments surrounding the raising of the minimum wage. This was critical commentary considering we are still fighting this battle tirelessly and making very little progress. Shipler highlights that one of the biggest hurdles in raising the wages of the working poor is the comparison of those wages to the wages of others in positions deemed more "worthy" or deserving of money. So, essentially, we are promoting a predatory and unsustainable system based purely on a belief system about which jobs "matter" more than other jobs. Generally, of course, this is tied back to a college education and the cost thereof (though that is another can of worms, altogether):

"Pretty soon we've got these people who are being paid more than they really should be paid," he declared. Other employers echoed the conviction that there was a "right" wage for a job, and that if they raised their manual laborers' pay, they would have to do the same for their foremen, accountants, and executives to maintain a substantial distance between salaries.

Shipler also discusses the common (and, in my opinion, despicable) arguments regarding whether poor people should be shamed for buying luxury items such as cable TV, premium foods, or (and this one we hear all the time) cell phones:

They are caught between America's hedonism and in dictum that the poor are supposed to sacrifice, suffer, and certainly not purchase any fun for themselves. So Ann Brash gets raised eyebrows when she buys raspberries, and many others come under criticism for such indulgences as cable TV. The monthly cable bills cause acid indigestion in some people who do anti-poverty work, and the harshest critics seem to be those who were once poor themselves.

Another facet that I didn't expect Shipler to tackle, but which really added depth to his argument, was the inclusion of the struggles of undocumented workers in America. It's a contentious issue, now more than ever (*spits in the direction of our president*), but it needs to be discussed. Because there are millions of people supporting the backbone of our economy that we love to pretend don't exist, or else love to pretend exist as nothing more than malicious leeches, when the reality is far more sobering:

Being undocumented is precarious. Fearing deportation, you will think twice about contesting your wages or working conditions. You will be ineligible for government benefits except free school breakfast and lunch programs, emergency Medicaid, immunizations, and treatment for communicable diseases. And you'll suffer from less obvious inconveniences, such as the lack of a bank account, which will cost you in fees when you transfer money. In other words, American government and business gain financially from your inability to legalize your presence in the country.

As I said, Shipler presents an even-handed case, and he isn't afraid to say when people make decisions that do push them farther into the brutal slipstream of poverty. Blame (who has it, and who ought to have it) is a huge theme:

Rarely are they infuriated by their conditions, and when their anger surfaces, it is often misdirected against their spouses, their children, or their co-workers. They do not usually blame their bosses, their government, their country, or the hierarchy of wealth, as they reasonably could. They often blame themselves, and they are sometimes right to do so.

My main criticism with Shipler's work was that we actually spent a little too long in the minutiae of each of his case studies. For example, he usually elucidates an argument by providing a real-life example with a family/person living in poverty. These stories could go on forever, detailing every single detail of a particular person's "sob story", to be so crude, even after the point had already been made and the reader was ready to move on. Personally, I would have rather Shipler spent a little less time on the subjective personal accounts and more on some firm solutions. One of my frustrations was that Shipler presents all this fantastic commentary and then falls just short of offering up solutions such as socialized medicine, socialized education, limits on the amount CEOs are allowed to earn in comparison to their lowest-paid employee, etc. I wanted more of that, and didn't really get it.

At the end of the day, I found great value in this book and would recommend it to everyone -- ESPECIALLY if you have rudely judged people's poverty based on perceived laziness, spending beyond their "means" (for example possessing cell phones or cable TV), having "too many" children, having children out of wedlock/as a single mother, having poor education/not attending college, etc. This book is for you if you are that person, as I think many of us have been at one point or other in our lives (especially if you grew up poor and managed to, miraculously, claw your way up out of it). Stop opening up your mouth to spew judgment and sit down to listen for a change. :)