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
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
Even when uttered by Democrats, "middle class" often sounds like a mealymouthed way of saying, "Us, and not them," where "them" includes… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
in our culture, the professional, and largely white, middle class is taken as a social norm - a bland and neutral mainstream… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of 'traditional values' installed. ... the poor and the middle class were shaken… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
There is a reason why America produced the most vigorous feminist movement in the world: We were one of the only countries… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
a great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor. Take Wal-Mart, our largest… — 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
Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American culture. Some say it was in the twenties, when advertising became… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
Money does not bring happiness' - only the wherewithal, perhaps, to endure its absence. — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
![“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/quotes/img-quotes/be7/barbara-ehrenreich-1204_broads_in-a-process-that-had-begun-in-the-1980s_2784189.jpg)
![“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…” quote by Barbara Ehrenreich](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/187/barbara-ehrenreich-1204_abandon_what-would-it-mean-in-practice-to-elimin_140275.jpg)
![“Robert Jackall’s book [ Moral Mazes ] impressed on me that corporate dress serves a far more important function than mere body covering. “Proper management of one’s external appearances,” he writes, “simply signals to one’s superiors that one is prepared to undertake other kinds of…” quote by Barbara Ehrenreich](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ead/barbara-ehrenreich-1204_attire_robert-jackall-s-book-moral-mazes-impres_186386.jpg)
