Work is not a way out of poverty, she argues, but rather a physically and emotionally damaging state in which the economic laws of supply and demand often simply don’t apply. In addition to drawing on these examples, Barbara constantly refers to prices, costs, and calculations in her own experiment.
It doesn’t help that companies often withhold the first week’s payment, which means both that a low-wage worker will be desperate even while working, and that changing jobs is far less easy or attractive than one might assume. One illness or other unforeseen event can mean that they are immediately facing destitution. Without savings to rely on, and often without financial help from parents or other family members, low-wage workers are in a constant state of emergency. Even organizations meant to assist low-wage workers only complicate things even more: food banks are often only open 9-5, when most people are at work, and the food they offer is similarly made up of unhealthy, empty calories. Without a full kitchen, she cannot cook and freeze large quantities of food, and so ends up having to eat both more expensively and very unhealthily at fast-food restaurants and convenience stores.
Without savings, Barbara cannot afford the deposit for an apartment, and so ends up having to pay far more for a motel room-a situation that, she learns, is far from uncommon. One major economic lesson from this experiment is how wildly inefficient living and working in poverty can become. Barbara reveals the complications that arise from trying to survive on a minimum-age job-complications often hidden to those who aren’t working as low-wage workers-to make the case that such labor is ultimately unsustainable. As Barbara came to learn, and explains throughout her book, such a goal is far from simple. When Barbara Ehrenreich set out to write the book that would become Nickel and Dimed, her stated goal was pretty straightforward: to see if she could pay for rent, food, and other bills as a low-wage worker.
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