Nickel and Dimed

Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Nickel and Dimed, is an investigative novel about the struggles of the lower class. Ehrenreich moves to three different towns and attempts to live off the minimum wage jobs of waitress, maid, and Wal-Mart employee. During her experience, Ehrenreich discovers the tribulations of many of our nation's poor and how most of them are hard to spot.
Although the topic of Ehrenreich's novel is very serious and thought provoking, she manages to write with some dark humor that makes the book more relatable to her audience. Her humor is much appreciated and helpes advance the book as a story, rather than just a woeful tale of hardship.
The book does raise a question of how much people should be paid. I am a firm believer in fairness, and it just doesn't seem fair to me that a Wal-Mart worker should be paid the same as, say, a teacher, just so each can support themselves. But in the same respect, the Wal-Mart employee, assuming they are an adult with a family, could not possibly support themselves on minimum wage. It seemed to me that Wal-Mart Ehrenreich worked at was aware of this fact, and the situations of many of their employees due to the video against unions during the orientation. If the company thought that there was no discontent within their business, why would they have gone to such lengths to discourage unions? I think it is up to any company to recognize the needs of their employees and pay them accordingly.