The Working Poor

The Working Poor travels into the forgotten America. It is a book about people and places that most us have never thought about. We have our debates about these people, their lifestyles, how they raise their children and where they work but we don't really know them and for the most part don't care. How many of us notice "the man who washes cars but does not own one, the clerk who files cancelled checks at the bank but has $2.02 in her own account or the woman who copyedits medical textbooks but hasn't been to a dentist in a decade?"(Shipler,3) With this book, Shipler takes you into their lives, it allows you to understand some of their choices and their lack of options. The Working Poor makes you understand what it is like to work hard, but still not be able to rise out of poverty The people in this book are in a life of poverty for many reasons, they are "climbing out of welfare, drug addiction or homelessness" (Shipler, 4) and now are trapped in low-wage work. For these people any small inconvenience can strip their small savings, take their home and put them on the streets. When they work for minimum wage, or close to, and have no benefits, any small upset is a crisis. If a child gets sick, they can not afford to take them to the doctor or get a prescription, the child's condition worsens and they must get emergency care and be away from work, they most likely will lose their job and then be stuck with thousands of dollars work of hospital bills. If their car breaks down, they don't have the money to get it fixed and that forces them to rely on public transportation or walking to work, again threatening their employment. It is an endless cycle. They don't have money in savings because they are poor and have to spend every penny they make to survive, they don't have an education because they can not afford to take time away from work to attend, they have trouble getting better paying positions because they don't have higher education so they are forced to