The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America by Victor Tan Chen and Katherine Newman

Wow, each one of these stories was more depressing than the last. I don't mean this in a bad way, I mean you know going into it that it's a sad subject. If anything it made me feel gratitude for what I have in a time when I was really lacking it. However, all the subjects were from the same little area in New York and 98% of them were immigrants who barely spoke English. The problem with this? It's not about the near poor in America, it's about immigrants and their difficulty getting a foothold here. That's ok, just call it that. I agree with all the reforms and programs proposed at the end, but so what, it's just a book. If only books could change things like they used to. They made an important point in warning not to let the American principal of if you work hard you will prosper become a lie. But it already is a lie. People who have it good think that the people who don't make a lot of money deserve it because they are lazy. These people work their asses off. All employed people work their asses off. Working your ass off in America isn't rewarded equally. Another realization is the effect of two simultaneous fucked up events. On one hand over here you have welfare reform booting a bunch of single mothers into the workforce. Ok yay, punish those welfare queens. On the other hand over here you have No Child Left Behind resulting in all kinds of extra academic demands on children and their parents. So now you have a bunch of kids of single mom's failing school because their mom's can't get off work to be a force in their children's academic life. So now their kids are gonna be undereducated (stupid) and will have to take their own shitty paying benefit free exhausting job. I'm not really describing this properly right now because I am also watching "Obese and Pregnant" on TLC. Anyway, point being, those of you "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" people forget that not everyone has boots. Yes we do expect people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and welfare isn't supposed replace effort, it's just the boots. To those of you who begrudge them this I say wow, good for you, I sure admire the choices you made before you were born, aren't you glad you didn't go get high the day parents were handed out like those other losers.