Anonymous says:

This type of book (as evidenced by the review offered by Ms. Marshall below) is the type of drivel that comes from people who subscribe to the “I am owed everything” school.

Jobs .. and the economy. Those seem to be the issues that are driving the author and, if not coincidently most, of those who are supporting the Kerry candidacy.

Listen up. They’re not your jobs! The jobs belong to the employers .. not to you! You have job skills and, presumably, a willingness to work. Your task in a free economy is to get out there and find some employer with a job who needs your skills … and strike a deal.

If you do not have the particular set of job skills that an employer needs, or if you have priced your labor out of the marketplace, guess what? It’s not the employer’s fault. The fault lies with you. Either develop a new set of job skills that are actually in demand, or adjust your pricing. The employer knows what he’s looking for. If you’re not it .. it’s your problem, not his.

Now … the author says he is supportive of Democrats because they care about solving this situation. Presumably supporters of this book are going to vote for John Kerry. You mean to tell me that you’re going to vote against George Bush this year because you don’t have a set of job skills that are in demand in our free marketplace? Yeah .. that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

What we are seeing here is a demonstration of the “government owes me” mentality of far too many Americans. Every time you arrive at a speed bump in your life’s journey you start screaming to the government for help. Sure, the speed bump is going to slow you down a bit … but just keep moving forward and things inevitably pick up speed again. Americans are becoming helpless whiners. The more helpless you are, and the more you whine, the more likely it is you’re going to vote for a Democrat. Democrats specialize in stroking the malcontent.

Pure redistributionist drivel.
Rating: 1 / 5

Seth J. Frantzman says:

This book claims to expose how hard and terrible it is to be the `working poor’ but this is a false claim. The working poor aren’t `invisible’ in fact they are very visible. Every time one gets gas or goes to a fast food restaurant or goes to a lumber yard they get to witness the working poor in their natural environment. And in fact the term `working’ is improperly addendumed to the word `poor’ in this book. Many poor people, this book ignores them, are not working at all, they are simply sitting around. This is a false analysis and a dry text, not really that insightful, since most of its conclusions are blatantly obvious.

Seth J. Frantzman
Rating: 2 / 5

Jerry Saperstein says:

Shipler preaches to the choir of those who believe the United States is a horrible place, it’s political system more oppressive than the former Soviet Union and that more government bureaucracy and taxpayer money alone can solve a given problem.

Shipler begins with an untrue thesis: “Workers at the edge of poverty are essential to America’s prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole [whatever that is supposed to mean] . . . It is time to be ashamed.”

Shipler’s agenda is clear: take the money from taxpayers and give it to other people. Wealth redistribution to some, Marxism or socialism to others, Shipler’s idea is to strip some of their earnings in order to “lift” those who have failed to take advantage of the opportunities offered in this country – or have other problems, such as drug addiction and alcoholism.

Shipler makes his biases clear through blanket statements such as liberals support intact families while conservatives demand dysfunctional families. He offers no support for such claims – and it is unlikely that such blatant generalizations could be supported.

Ultimately Shipler gives away his own flawed perspspective. He claims “[a]s the 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 jsut the lack of health insurance but also the lack of healthy households.” Two paragraphs later he asserts “[a]ll of the problems have to be attacked at once.”

Like those revolutionaries (a tiny band) who gave birth to the long discredited concept of the “New Soviet Man,” Shipler’s solution would require the vast majority of responsible, hard-working people to surrender their own limited money and freedom to serve the needs of the few who have squandered their opportunities, consciously made poor decisions that they blame others for and refuse to take responsibility for.

Unrepentant Marxists, unthinking do-gooders and those who want everyone to share equally in misery will love this book. Others not so inclined may feel a chill that Shipler and his fellow-travellers have failed to learn the lessons of history: “from each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs” was a philosophy that impoverished billions and murdered hundreds of millions. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.

Shipler’s tome, stripped of its sugarcoating, is nothing more than warmed over Marxist cant.

Jerry
Rating: 1 / 5