Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money. — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
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… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
Both chronic, long-term poverty and downward mobility from the middle class are in the same category of things that America likes not… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
I've spent so many years talking about poverty and economic justice, I'm strongly tempted to get biblical. Jesus' teachings are so radical;… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
To live in poverty is to live with constant uncertainty, to accept galling indignities, and to expect harassment by the police, welfare… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: "Work hard… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
The "discovery" of poverty at the beginning of the 1960s was something like the "discovery" of America almost five hundred years earlier.… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
In a process that had begun in the 1980s and suddenly accelerated in the early 2000s ... [t]he peaks of great wealth… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
“My aim here was much more straightforward and objective — just to see whether I could match income to expenses, as the… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
“When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
By the Reagan era, the 'culture of poverty' had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused not by low wages… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
Money does not bring happiness' - only the wherewithal, perhaps, to endure its absence. — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
Yes. I think the anti-Wal-Mart is Costco, which pays much better and has much better health benefits and which is profitable and offers low… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
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… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
Wars produce warlike societies, which in turn make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone themselves. — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
“Robert Jackall’s book [ Moral Mazes ] impressed on me that corporate dress serves a far more important function than mere body covering. “Proper… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
war is, in some not yet entirely defined sense, a self-replicating pattern of behavior, possessed of a dynamism not unlike that of living things. — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of 'traditional values' installed. ... the poor and the middle class were shaken down, and… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
Marriage probably originated as a straightforward food-for-sex deal among foraging primates. Compatibility was not a big issue, nor, of course, was there any tension… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
I became a student of the history of religion. I am fascinated by how religions often center on mystical experience, and in the Old… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
The nation was not founded by habitual groupthinkers. But it stands a fair chance of being destroyed by them. — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
“You might discover that, nationwide, America's food banks are experiencing 'a torrent of need which [they] cannot meet' and that, according to a survey… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
My Turn is the distilled bathwater of Mrs. Reagan's life. It is for the most part sweetish, with a tart edge of rebuke, but… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share
![“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…” quote by Barbara Ehrenreich](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/be7/barbara-ehrenreich-1204_broads_in-a-process-that-had-begun-in-the-1980s_2784189.jpg)
