Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes About Poverty

Quotes about: Poverty

• Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Motivation, Character, Poverty

  "Time to Wake Up: Stop Blaming Poverty on the Poor". Essay by Barbara Ehrenreich, published in Maria Shriver "The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink", shriverreport.org. January 13, 2014.

• Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  War, Distance, Class

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

• To live in poverty is to live with constant uncertainty, to accept galling indignities, and to expect harassment by the police, welfare officials and employers, as well as by others who are poor and desperate.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Expectations, Police, Poverty

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

• But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Offering, Should Have, Ideas

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.155, Macmillan

• I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: "Work hard and you'll get ahead" or "It's hard work that got us where we are." No one ever said that you could work hard - harder even than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Hard Work, Secret, Finding Yourself

  "Nickel and Dimed". Book by Barbara Ehrenreich, progressive.org. January 1, 2010.

• The "discovery" of poverty at the beginning of the 1960s was something like the "discovery" of America almost five hundred years earlier. In the case of each of these exotic terrains, plenty of people were on the site before the discoverers ever arrived.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Discovery, Years, America

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

• In a process that had begun in the 1980s and suddenly accelerated in the early 2000s ... [t]he peaks of great wealth grew higher, rising up beyond the clouds, while the valleys of poverty sank lower into perpetual shadow. The once broad plateau of the middle class eroded away into a narrow ledge, with the white-knuckled occupants holding on for dear life.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Clouds, Class, White

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2008). “Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation”, Granta Books (UK)

• By the Reagan era, the 'culture of poverty' had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused not by low wages or a lack of jobs but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles. The poor were dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to 'defer gratification' or possibly even set an alarm clock. The last thing they could be trusted with was money.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Attitude, Addiction

  "Tomgram: Barbara Ehrenreich, American Poverty, 50 Years Later". www.tomdispatch.com. March 15, 2012.

• Both chronic, long-term poverty and downward mobility from the middle class are in the same category of things that America likes not to think about.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Thinking, Class, America

  "Tomdispatch Interview: Ehrenreich, The Prey and the Predators". Interview with Tom Engelhardt, www.tomdispatch.com. June 4, 2006.

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