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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

The ‘working poor,’ as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Facts Our Poor Society
Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Career Pain Thinking
The media have just buried the last yuppie, a pathetic creature who had not heard the news that the great pendulum of public consciousness has just swung from Greed to Compassion and from Tex-Mex to meatballs
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Compassion Media Yuppies
For a long time on Earth humans didn’t worship good gods; that’s a new idea. The ancient Greek gods, the Hindu gods, are fairly amoral, most of them. We get stuck when we insist that God be both good and all-powerful.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Ideas Long Powerful
What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the ‘negative people’ from one’s life [as demanded by motivational speaker J.P. Maroney]? It might be a good idea to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Mean Practice Teenager
Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don’t happen to think it’s an appropriate subject for an ‘ethic.’
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Ethics Thinking Work
the fastest-growing brand of religion is of the magical ‘name it and claim it’ variety, in which the deity exists only to meet one’s immediate, self-identified needs.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Exist Magical Name Need Self
It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the Earth can sustain.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Earth Numbers Paper
The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Circles Overcoming Snakes
From an entertainment point of view, the Solar System has been a bust. None of the planets turns out to have any real-estate potential, and most of them are probably even useless for filming Dune sequels.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Real Science Views
Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Character Motivation Poverty
Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production – only to produce a race of bed-wetters!
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Business Ocean Race
Every time a bank swoops down to snatch up a home, it should be met with a crowd of jeering, obstructive neighbors. And although this may be point 4.5, how about organizing a mass refusal to pay back student loans?
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Bank Crowd Home Neighbour Swoop
Call it ‘nationalism’ when you affix a flag to your car, and leave the word ‘patriotism’ for your efforts to make this country a kinder, more egalitarian place, and one that is less dangerous to the rest of the world.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Car Country Effort
Yes, I think especially the Pentecostal churches, you know, that there’s been such a growth in Pentecostalism. And it’s a rejection of the much more dour and barren kind of Calvinist worship and also, the very formal Catholic forms of worship.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Catholic Rejection Thinking
The nation was not founded by habitual groupthinkers. But it stands a fair chance of being destroyed by them.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Chance Fairs Political

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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