Nickel and Dimed

While I haven't read this book, your review brings up an topic which i have thought a lot about. I get frusterated in a couple of different ways.. On the one hand I grew up with the experience of living an apartment as the only white kid amoung minority with my single mom, with our house full of borrow stuff, eating spam from food stamp's and having our rent being pay'd on a credit card. I knew people who lived in their car, and so i'm very greatfull, never really consider myself in any true sense poor. I have been frusterated with having a hard time finding people in evangelical churches to relate to lower working class people. I think that with a relatively strong community compared to the outside the help that you get in the church, and the grounding it gives in your life, you are just surrounded by a culture, and it is a good thing, to provide for your family. Often saved 'sinner's' will work, then at least send their covenant kid's off to college. This causes a chain reaction, I could get into like that of Isreal where God blesses his people when they come back to him, then the people forget God in thier wealth. The evangelical church is often completely choked down by these false priorities I believe. It scares me to go into the many new seeker sensative churches, where it seems to be important to serve expresso, have thousand dollar leather seats in the lobby, maybe top of the line microphones for the sound system that could easily play many year's for a national christian worker's salary in the two thirds world. Anyway behind it is a sad model for church growth by collecting all kinds of people that are exactly like eachother so they feel comfortable. Why am I talking about all this, cause it has directly to do with the church's failure to understand the life of other's outside there social class. We fail to be even able to need to hear most of the New Testament, and all its teaching about the breaking of the division between people, rich poor, base wise, greek, jew.. when we gather, we never need to watch our hearts because, there is no poor person who would think to enter our church, and if we are in the inner city we don't worry much about favouritism to the rich since they have no business there. there is a huge rift between the classes and races, in the church of God, and the Church itself is what should be the picture and the most progress on this issue the picture of heavenly unity. Bringing all nation's under the cross. Indignious church planting oversea's is another example of how we have a whole system of segragating people off in different groups, that live in the same area,.. so that in for example india recently converted jain's and punjabi's and moslem's get to still hold there prejudices to each other cause they go to different churches. Now on the other hand, i have also lived oversea's in Kenya. so i also get frusterated with people's idea of poverty in the states. My mom worked for wal-mart, she is over 50 and finally the last couple years has a over the phone insurance job which doesn't require her to work 60+ hours a week to survive. people in these situations not having insurance ect.. there is a great dissatisfaction with life, and a way greater tendency to be jaded and to drink and ect.. However it is beyond rediculous in my mind to believe that this woman who seems to be healthy and able to write books even, would end up homeless if it were not only an experiment working these minium wage jobs. when i see what the diaconal fund in my church goes to its hard not to laugh, i am deffinitely greatfully and believe they are doing the right thing. but it is often like, giving a microwave to someone who can't afford it or a car. there is soo much excess close and furniture, and way's in america to get money on the side, collecting scrap metal or whatever that anyone can rise and make money. we need to have a true perspective and realize we live in more of a meritocracy then anywhere else in the world, and then even in economic slumps, we have more oppertunities here then most places can imagine. I don't mean for a minute that personal and social problems can plague people's minds. that they do not need help. we ought to be ashamed to see how bad sections of our cities are, looking roads completely undriveable, .. we just put so much reliance in ourselves and believe others ought to help themselves, and think that the goverment has enough programs that we abband the cause of the poor right infront of our eyes. however the ones who really sacrafice that we may live our life styles.. even the rather easy life style of most 'poor' in the states are the places in the world which manufactor most of the things that fill our houses. my grandfather made pencil's. even with how little everyone made back then, you wouldn't buy ton's of boxes of them for your kids if we weren't getting them from china with practically no labour costs, we need a certian amount to live, because we can not live in the sheet metal temporary houses, that much of the world live in. and here is a even more complex system, where, you have the interests instead of a few rich, and the power of something like slave labour to great nations of power, but you have the whole entire population of the western world, absorbing the resources and giving almost nothing for the labour, so that we may be able to afford all these wonderfull things we use all the time.. i'm sorry i went on a huge rant noone will actually read.. it may seem like i'm confused.. am i'm saying the poor in the states should pick themselves up by there bootstraps or what? no i'm not, i'm all for this.. the christian community becoming more of a true community, single.. married.. black.. white.. rich .. poor.. ect.. and then perhaps, we will be on the path to becoming a community with the world.. it would be a great witness to the Lord.. and i'm also stressing my complaint with the idea that it is soo bad for the poor in our country, where we need to have a right perspective on the hope there is here, in contrast to the hopelessness economically that many are born into in asia and africa and south america ect..

Another great book about this topic is "No Shame In My Game." While not written by a Christian author, it is a combination of research on the impact of various social programs on the impoverished while at the same time stopping to humanize the blite in our inner city by profiling these families individually and in enough detail that the reader can appreciate what is going on. The inner cities in America are something of a shame to the church and it is only the love of Christ that will allow the cycle of poverty and sin to be broken.

Thanks for reviewing this. Powerful topic. Most of us somewhere near the middle types experience the fear of becoming poor but put most of our efforts into that battle, which, at best, might allow us to move up a class or, hopefully, at worst, might keep us from moving down. In line with your other commenters...it seems pretty clear that in the church there should be no one in need (I realize that is slightly over simplified). In reality though most of the needy are filtered out before they get there or soon after.

I read Nickel and Dimed for a class of mine and was very interested in the book the whole way through. The situations that Barbara describes are enlightening and many people probably would not think of them. This book makes you think about what you have if you're not amongst the working poor and makes you grateful that you don't have to survive on one paycheck at a time. So many workers deserce adequate paychecks for the amount of work they do, but instead, they are seen as invisible workers who do not receive much credit, if any at all. I thank the low wage workers who keep showing up for work everyday and congratulate them on a job well done.