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Book Review of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
thedudeabides avatar reviewed on + 28 more book reviews


I like the idea of this book because in its own way it counteracts the TV brainwashing that you get with a B.S. show like Undercover Boss. In a show like that you see the warm-hearted, caring boss who built an entire company with nothing but his bare hands and his love of serving mankind. He then shows up incognito in his restaurant's kitchen, or on the line, or at the phones cubicles next to the unwashed masses receiving minimum wage who seem almost determined to avoid his generous policies and disregard his clearly-dictated protocols. Sniff, sniff, those poor CEOs -- doesn't anyone out there understand their pain?

I read this years ago and there is an even greater need for a book like this after the 2007/2008 economic disasters George w. Bush inflicted upon this country (stock market dropped from a high of over 15,000 to the 7,000s -- feel free to look it up).

Since the Bush economic collapse (which we have not as of yet fully recovered from and likely never will), the vast majority of stock market profits have gone to the wealthiest 1% (and they're paying less of a tax rate then you are), so if you don't think the system is broken and geared toward keeping them rich and you closer and closer to minimum wage, it is.

However, we deserved a better book on this subject of the undercover employEE.

This book is repetitious, the author a little self-aggrandizing, and it doesn't do the thing our collected exploited workers out there desperately need most: suggest real ways to fix the corporatized mess we now face everywhere and in every market sector.

For example, the author could have looked at other countries. In France they still have some employee rights and anyone who secretly places a video cameras in the workplace will be prosecuted. Something to think about, here in the land of the free (...free to be videotaped, recorded, fired at will...).

I consider this book to be a good effort, with the author's heart in the right place, but it's not the definitive work.