I read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed back in 2010. Ehrenreich died in 2022, and, in reading Gabriel Winant's piece on her life in the latest issue of n+1 magazine, I was reminded of this passage:
When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.
There are two reactions to this. First, anger at our capitalist system that not only allows it, but actually requires it in order for capitalism to "work". One need only look at today's Federal reserve that is essentially trying to induce higher unemployment to solve a problem that these newly unemployed didn't cause. When we end up with too few poor people, the system openly sets out to create more of them so that the capitalist is somehow made whole again.
But just as importantly, it should cause us to examine our own culpability in this whole mess, not let ourselves off the hook. I know that I am guilty.
