Barbara Ehrenreich, an always-powerful voice for feminism and social justice, has put out an excellent-looking book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America [review by NY Times]. Ehrenreich spent three months trying to make ends meet in low-paid unskilled labor, the kind of situations faced by millions since the obliteration of welfare (it’s 6 years after the 1995 welfare reform, meaning that the first wave of people booted off the rolls by the five year restriction are now facing the increasingly troubled job market without anything resembling a safety net, without any chance to go to school to better their chances (since that doesn’t count as working for the purposes of TANF), and generally just in a pretty shitty situation. Ehrenreich’s time spent living in a trailer, so exhausted and in a neighborhood so desperate that she could only describe herself and her neighbors as canned labor, is a frighteningly real response to those feel-good liberals who proclaim the virtues of voluntarily living in poverty and complain about how frustrated they feel with their Palm Pilots and SUVs.