The Working Poor: Invisible in America

Shipler describes the plight of immigrants: “Where immigrants have come seeking lives of plenty, they bring their deprivation with them, creating islands of hardship amid the surging tides of prosperity. For a paltry wage […] they feed and clothe and comfort the Americans they wish to emulate” (77). This accurately describes the fate of a Mexican, Los Angeles-based garment worker, Candalaria, who makes “three-quarters of a cent for each fly she sewed with a machine onto a pair of jeans” (78).Employers consistently find ways to pay workers as little as possible and when the state raises the minimum wage, the employer raises the speed of production. Those who can’t keep up are fired. One reason for this is that LA-based manufacturing is in competition with global manufacturing in developing countries; therefore, low wages and standards set in developing countries have been imported into the United States.

While acknowledging that capitalist free trade is a better system than communism, Shipler emphasizes its ruthlessness. Whereas the American ideal embraces equality of opportunity, free enterprise “thrives on difference—the difference between the owner and the worker, the educated and the less educated, the skilled and the less skilled […] and ultimately the rich and the poor” (89).