Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed (via itsnevertoolatte)

Yes, this. You are constantly weighing everything. I will give up food today to have bus fare tomorrow. I won’t buy a secondhand coat because utilities are due. I can’t call in sick no matter how bad it gets because if I lose my job I have nothing. It goes on and on. It is relentless.

(via inautumn-inkashmir)

And even when you do your best to control the shit you can, outside forces are always ready to sink your ship.

(via so-treu)

(via redcloud)

What is harder for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress: The lunch that consists of Doritos or hot dog rolls, leading to faintness before the end of the shift. The “home” that is also a car or a van. The illness or injury that must be “worked through,” with gritted teeth, because there’s no sick pay or health insurance and the loss of one day’s pay will mean no groceries for the next. These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle, even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-level punishment. They are, by almost any standard of subsistence, emergency situations. And that is how we should see the poverty of so many millions of low-wage Americans—as a state of emergency.