[Marxism] Unspeakable--back in the u.s.a.

[<lshan@xxxxxxx>]

Caroline Payne embraces the ethics of America. She works hard and has no
patience with those who don't. She has owned a house, pursued an education
and deferred to the needs of her child. Yet she can barely pay her bills.
Her earnings have hovered in a twilight between poverty and minimal comfort,
usually between $8,000 and $12,000 a year.

She is the invisible American, unnoticed because she blends in. Like
millions at the bottom of the labor force who contribute to the country's
prosperity, Caroline's diligence is a camouflage. At the convenience store
where she works, customers do not see that she struggles against
destitution.

Others of the unseen sew clothes, clean offices and harvest fruit. They
serve Big Macs and stack merchandise at Wal-Mart. In a California factory,
they package lights for kids' bikes. In a New Hampshire plant, they assemble
books of wallpaper samples.

They cannot afford the wallpaper themselves, just as the man who washes cars
does not own one. The assistant teacher cannot pay the fees to put her own
children in the day-care center where she works. The clerk in the back room
of a bank, filing canceled checks, may have $2.02 in her own account, as
Caroline had when she briefly did that job. The clientele never saw her. She
was out of sight, part of the hidden America.

Read on; it gets worse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/magazine/18POOR.html?pagewanted=print&posi
tion=


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