Barbara Ehrenreich: On Turning Poverty Into an American Crime

Tuesday 9 August 2011

by: Barbara Ehrenreich, TomDispatch | Op-Ed

I completed the manuscript for "Nickel and Dimed" in a time of seemingly boundless prosperity. Technology innovators and venture capitalists were acquiring sudden fortunes, buying up McMansions like the ones I had cleaned in Maine and much larger. Even secretaries in some hi-tech firms were striking it rich with their stock options. There was loose talk about a permanent conquest of the business cycle, and a sassy new spirit infecting American capitalism. In San Francisco, a billboard for an e-trading firm proclaimed, "Make love not war," and then -- down at the bottom -- "Screw it, just make money."