Pikkukuvaa napsauttamalla pääset Google Booksiin.
Ladataan... The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair EconomyTekijä: Lisa Dodson
- Ladataan...
Kirjaudu LibraryThingiin nähdäksesi, pidätkö tästä kirjasta vai et. Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta. After years of conducting focus groups and collaborative social research, Dodson wrote this book summarizing her findings. Mixing together anecdotes and US statistics on poverty, Dodson examines a country without universal health care, a livable minimum wage, or affordable care for children, the elderly, or the disabled. As Dodson says, poverty created and maintained at an institutional level is bad not only for the well-being of those in poverty but also harms everyone else in society. She breaks down the exact numbers of people's wages and bills, and presents the nearly impossible logistics required to raise children as a low-wage earner. She talks a bit about the strategies individuals have used to combat these structural problems, like allowing workers to have flexible shifts, "losing" diaper inventory, or letting uninsured patients use other people's insurance. She never gets in depth about these strategies for fear of making them more difficult to do, but it's still clear that even though she calls middle class individuals' efforts to ameliorate suffering due to poverty a "moral underground," there really isn't an "underground" in the sense of an organized network. From her descriptions, at least, it seems like it remains very disconnected and individual. None of this is breaking news, but I like the way Dodson frames it all. I could feel her frustration biting through the numbers and her bland but leading questions to those who blame structural issues on individuals' work ethics. näyttää 5/5 ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu
A "fascinating" look at the disconnect between corporate policies and workers' real lives--and the everyday heroes who try to help (Publishers Weekly). For the poor, there are challenges every day that they don't have extra money to solve: a sick kid, car trouble, an unexpected dentist bill. The obstacles can make it harder to hold on to a job--but a job loss would be catastrophic. However, there are countless unsung heroes who bend or break the rules to help those millions of Americans with impossible schedules, paychecks, and lives make it from paycheck to paycheck. This book tells their stories. Whether it's a nurse choosing to treat an uninsured child, a supervisor deciding to overlook infractions, or a restaurant manager sneaking food to a worker's children, middle-class Americans are secretly refusing to be complicit in a fundamentally unfair system that puts a decent life beyond the reach of the working poor. In this tale of a kind of economic disobedience--told in whispers to Lisa Dodson over the course of eight years of research across the country--hundreds of supervisors, teachers, and health care professionals describe intentional acts of defiance that together tell the story of a quiet revolt, of a moral underground that has grown in response to an immoral economy. It documents a whole new phenomenon--people reaching across America's economic fault line--and provides an account of the human consequences and lives behind the business-page headlines. "If only this book had been published in 2007. Then the hundreds of people interviewed by Lisa Dodson would have been able to pass along an important piece of advice: What's good for business is not necessarily good for America." --Time Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
Current Discussions-Suosituimmat kansikuvat
Google Books — Ladataan... LajityypitMelvil Decimal System (DDC)339.20973Social sciences Economics Macroeconomics and related topics Distribution Of Income And WealthKongressin kirjaston luokitusArvio (tähdet)Keskiarvo:
Oletko sinä tämä henkilö? |
Now, leaving the negative I saw as a reader aside, this is a book that more people need to be reading. What I am afraid of is that the usual "poor blaming" and "victim blaming" crowds (you know them, the asshats who always say "if those poor people only did X and Y" and "why the hell do they keep breeding?") will probably glance at it, then toss it aside, minds already closed and made up. But they need to read this. Policy makers, educators, social workers, teachers, parents, all need to be reading this. Because when we think of poverty, we usually think of those who suffer it. The real issue, in addition to that, is the impact that poverty has on the rest of society. The poor do work, and they work hard. In their underpaid, often exploitative jobs they come across middle class people, their employers and managers, and this creates tension and strife. Some of these managers lack any sense of empathy or compassion in spite of the fact they are the ones who often enable an unjust system that does not even pay a living wage. But Dodson points out that there are some small points of hope: managers, supervisors, superiors, so on who see injustice and refuse to simply watch it happen. They show compassion and empathy, and they disobey the rules as need be because immoral conditions should not be tolerated. So, a manager might overlook a worker being late because of a mother having to take a kid to the doctor, or maybe said manager alters the time clock so she gets her full pay if the mother had to leave early for said doctor appointment. What conservative hypocrites fail to appreciate, and it is very well laid out here, is that minimum wage jobs not do not provide a living wage: period. For all their whining about "welfare moms" and other stereotypes of unemployed people, there are are tons of working poor, who have, you know, real jobs. And in their minds, work is what is supposed to lift them out of poverty and give them progress. Well, when you pay shitty wages that force someone to work two or even three jobs to make ends meet, other corners have to be cut. So, mom has to leave her child alone at home for a few hours because she cannot afford day care on the shit salary your slave job pays. Is that really neglect? It's either the kid or the job. Most middle class people would probably say the kid first, but they have the resources to buy child care as needed. Poor people often lack that option, and when they do, that situation does have ripples throughout the rest of society, something that most whiny right winger conservatives and libertarians fail to see.
So, a small, mostly invisible moral underground emerges where some folks with compassion do whatever they can to help out their poor workers and friends. Some of these managers do have compassion and hearts, and they see the plight of their workers. A doctor writes a prescription for an asthmatic patient, but puts it in the name of the aunt, for instance, because said aunt has health insurance, so the medication will be covered. Fraud? To the letter of the law moralists, maybe. But it's either that, or let a child go without life saving medicine. If I was that physician, I know my choice. Do you? And this kind of thing does happen all over the place. However, as Dodson points out, it is not visible. It is an underground. She had to do a lot of work and give a lot of reassurances to get some of the information. You see, people in the Moral Underground have certain mechanisms and knowledge in place, information they are not going to share with just anyone, if at all. In many cases, the best Dodson could do was just provide outlines of what some folks do, or mention they did something without giving any specifics so as not to disrupt a pipeline.
At the end of the book, Dodson does provide a plan, outlining what needs to change and happen for things to get better in order to have a truly fair economy for ordinary people. Overall, this is probably one of the best books I have read, and I do wish more people will read it. ( )