Ehrenreich on "Recession Porn" and poor still not getting by in America

Recently Author Barbara Ehrenreich revisited some of the people she wrote about in her book Nickel & Dimed to see how they were faring in the current economic climate. She writes about them in a recent Op-Ed in the NY Times:

The current recession is knocking the working poor down another notch — from low-wage employment and inadequate housing toward erratic employment and no housing at all.

She says that the media is obsessed with “Recession Porn.”

the story of an incremental descent from excess to frugality, from ease to austerity. The super-rich give up their personal jets; the upper middle class cut back on private Pilates classes; the merely middle class forgo vacations and evenings at Applebee’s.

Yet the story of the poor getting poorer isn’t reported on. …