“Weekend Edition” on WAMU,  one of the excellent NPR stations available in Jefferson County, usually informs, entertains and amuses. Today, however, I found myself infuriated instead.

Host Scott Simon said that a young man named Adam Shepherd decided not to get a job after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a couple of years ago. Instead, he hopped a train with $25 in his pocket and traveled to Charleston, S.C., to learn firsthand what it’s like to live as an unskilled worker.

Reason? Barbara Ehrenreich’s book on the subject titled Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, was required reading for incoming U.N.C. students—and Shepherd was “not impressed.” He knew he could do better at it than she did.

Ehrenreich’s adventure began while she was lunching with the editor of Harper’s magazine about nine years ago. The conversation drifted to one of her favorite themes—poverty. How, she wondered, were the roughly four million women thrust into the labor market by the Clinton Welfare Reform bill going to make it on minimum wage?

“Some journalist,” Ehrenreich said, “ought to try it for a year—and then write about it.” And her editor responded, “Why not you?”

First she laid out some rules for herself: she wouldn’t fall back on skills derived from her education (she has a Ph.D. in biology) or her usual work. She’d take the highest paying job offered and do her best to hold it, no matter how much she disliked it or how hard it was. She would always take the cheapest accommodations she could find. She would always have a car, even though she’d have to turn to Rent-a-Wreck for that. She also ruled out homelessness.

And she promised herself that if a time came when she really didn’t know where her next meal was coming from she’d “dig out her ATM card and cheat.” (It got pretty rough but she never actually had to do that.)

She did learn to accept charity occasionally, something the working poor are often forced to do at least once a month (at the food pantry nearest you). She worked variously as a hotel cleaning woman, a waitress, a nursing home dietary aide (a fancy name for dishwasher), a domestic worker and a Wal-Mart “associate,” all joint-aching, foot-hurting, exhausting work for a woman over 50. She was always paid minimum wage, which required that she work two jobs. All were part-time and none offered benefits.

Ehrenreich concluded that the working poor neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for. They live in substandard housing so other homes will be shining clean—and they eat macaroni-and-cheese so they can serve others steak and shrimp. All of this helps keep inflation low and stocks high.

To be a member of the working poor, then, is to be a nameless benefactor for everybody else.
Shepherd, too, made some personal rules for his year-long experiment. He promised himself he would find a steady job, get an apartment and save two or three thousand dollars without using his education, connections, or his credit card. And he wouldn’t beg. To save rent money he’d also live in a homeless shelter for a while.

Before the end of that year he not only had a fulltime job and an apartment, he’d actually saved nearly $5000. He told Simon that he was proud of those accomplishments, and just as proud of proving that Barbara Ehrenreich was a bleeding heart who had just plain failed.

What made the difference in these two experiments, and why were the results so  different? That’s easy, dear reader. Adam Shepherd is a man.

First, he decided that, to save on rent, he’d live as a homeless person for a while, roaming the streets during the day and sleeping in shelters at night. That’s a risky life, but it’s much riskier for a woman. A healthy 20-year-old male just might be better equipped to handle it than an over-50 woman.

Second, Shepherd was able to find jobs that most women aren’t qualified for because they involve physical strength or custom: cleaning construction sites, picking up garbage, and, finally, a fulltime job as a furniture mover. All paid more than minimum wage (men get paid more, remember?), and the last one offered benefits.

Simon noted that Shepherd was not an addict or an alcoholic, nor a father having to pay child support, things that that complicate the lives of so many unskilled workers and homeless men. And it didn’t hurt that he’s a citizen, has no police record, and is white. Shepherd agreed that these may have been factors in his success. Indeed.

“Someday,” Ehrenreich predicts, “the working poor will demand to be paid what they’re worth. There’ll be strikes and disruption when that day comes—but the sky won’t fall. And we’ll all be better of for it in the end.”

“Workers,” Jesus says in Matthew 10:10, “shall be given what they need.“
Someday. Someday soon, we hope.