Stories by Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of thirteen books, including the New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Harpers, and the Progressive, she is a contributing writer to Time magazine. She lives in Florida. subscribe to Barbara Ehrenreich's feed

Barbara and John Ehrenreich: The Real Story Behind the Crash and Burn of America's Managerial Class

Posted on: Feb 19, 2013, Source: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - New York Office

How the rise and fall of the professional-managerial class has impacted the last hundred years.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Obama, Kiss Goldman Sachs Good-bye and Bail Out Everyday Americans!

Posted on: Nov 9, 2012, Source: BillMoyers.com

Mr. President, bail out your real constituency.

Ehrenreich: How Corporations and Local Governments Rob the Poor Blind

Posted on: May 17, 2012, Source: TomDispatch.com

The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators.

Barbara Ehrenreich: How I Discovered the Truth About Poverty

Posted on: Mar 15, 2012, Source: TomDispatch.com

Prevailing attitudes towards poverty blame the victim. Here's why that's so wrong.

Ehrenreich: The Truth Exposed by Occupy Shows That the Real Elites Are the Thieves of the 1%, Not The Liberals of Conservative Myth

Posted on: Dec 15, 2011, Source: The Nation and TomDispatch.com

For decades, conservatives have generated antipathy towards a so-called "liberal elite." Occupy helped America discover the 1% and their crimes.

Call Your Mayor: Complete List of Numbers for Occupied Cities

Posted on: Oct 24, 2011, Source: AlterNet

How Homelessness Became an Occupy Wall Street Issue

Posted on: Oct 23, 2011, Source: TomDispatch.com

The Occupy Wall Streeters are beginning to discover what homeless people have known all along--that most ordinary activities are illegal when performed in American streets.

Shocking Examples of How We've Turned Poverty into a Crime in America

Posted on: Aug 12, 2011, Source: TomDispatch.com

"When you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation."

Barbara Ehrenreich: America's Tragic Decline -- Resistance Bursts Out All Over the World, While We Do Nothing to Fight Corporate Takeover

Posted on: Aug 8, 2011, Source: Democracy Now!

Barbara Ehrenreich discusses the sorry state of the American economy and how it impacts real people.

Barbara Ehrenreich: 12,000 Drones, Lethal Cyborg Insects, See-Shoot Robots -- How Machines Are Taking Over War

Posted on: Jul 10, 2011, Source: TomDispatch.com

How far will the automation of war and the substitution of autonomous robots for human fighters go?

Wal-Mart -- It's Alive! How the Company Is Terrorizing the Country With its Corporate 'Personhood'

Posted on: Apr 29, 2011, Source: The American Prospect

If Wal-Mart is a person, as per the Supreme Court, it's a behemoth terrorizing the countryside. But when it comes to workers' rights, it remains curiously immune from lawsuits.

What Should Lefties Do in These Revolutionary Times?

Posted on: Aug 17, 2010, Source: The Nation

The role of the left should not be to uphold or defend a government increasingly at odds with the interests of the people, but to change it, drastically and from the ground up.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Why Forced Positive Thinking Is a Total Crock

Posted on: May 20, 2010, Source: Psychotherapy Networker

Positive psychology -- forced optimism -- is actually quite Calvinist, putting happiness to work as a means to an end.

Ehrenreich: The Pink-Ribbon Breast Cancer Cult

Posted on: Dec 2, 2009, Source: TomDispatch.com

What feminists don't need, no matter how many "races for the cure" they run, is a ladies’ auxiliary to the cancer-industrial complex.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Why Your Children May Not Get a Swine Flu Shot Before They Need It

Posted on: Nov 3, 2009, Source: TomDispatch.com

Too much faith in private enterprise has left us open to a flu epidemic.

Ridiculous Study Blames Feminism for Non-Existent 'Happiness Gap' Between Men and Women

Posted on: Oct 13, 2009, Source: TomDispatch.com

Much-discussed study claims that women are more depressed relative to men in recent decades, when it actually suggests that neither marriage nor children make women happy.

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?

Posted on: Aug 19, 2009, Source: The New York Times

If you're living on the streets, engaging in the biological necessities of life -- like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering -- will get you in jail.

The Economic Fallout Has Decimated the Black Middle Class

Posted on: Aug 9, 2009, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

40 percent of African Americans will have experienced unemployment or underemployment by 2010 and child poverty will increase to slightly over half.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Welcome to a Dying Industry, J-School Grads

Posted on: Jun 3, 2009, Source: AlterNet

Drop your sense of entitlement, Ehrenreich tells a graduating class of media makers, journalists are now "part of the working class."

Unemployed, and Not Getting a Job Anytime Soon? Why Not Build a Better World?

Posted on: May 11, 2009, Source: Madison Capital Times

You may be poorer than you've ever been, but you have more free time to express anger and urgency.

If We Are in the Death Spiral of Capitalism, Can We Start Using the "S" Word?

Posted on: Mar 5, 2009, Source: The Nation

The electroshock paddles of "stimulus" keep being applied, but the capitalist patient isn't waking up. Is it now safe to talk about socialism?

How a Man Was Thrown into Gitmo and Tortured for Clicking on My Article

Posted on: Feb 25, 2009, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

America in the Bush years was so vicious and stupid that it managed to take my freedom of speech and turn it into someone else's living hell.

Corporate America, Ground Your Jets

Posted on: Feb 20, 2009, Source: AlterNet

The American taxpayer, reeling from the economic meltdown, doesn't feel like subsidizing lavish jets and bonuses any more.

The Nouveau Poor Have Reached Numbers Too Large to Ignore

Posted on: Jan 12, 2009, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

As the poor and the formerly middle-class become the new American majority, will they finally have enough status to get their needs met?

How Positive Thinking Wrecked the Economy

Posted on: Sep 25, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

Besides greed, another habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking.

Flight Rage Incident Reveals the Dark Side of Osteen's 'Prosperity Gospel'

Posted on: Aug 12, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

The wife of get-rich-now pastor Joel Osteen faces a civil trial that embodies the sense of entitlement of those who preach the gospel of prosperity.

Suicide Spreads as One Solution to the Debt Crisis

Posted on: Jul 28, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

In a culture where credit rating is the key measure of self-worth, the increasing response to huge debts is "Just shoot me!"

Body Fat Holds The Key to Energy Independence

Posted on: Jun 23, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

Obese America is literally sitting on vast energy reserves -- all we need to do is extract it.

This Land Is Their Land: How the Rich Confiscate Natural Beauty from the Public

Posted on: Jun 16, 2008, Source: The Nation

In the era of the superrich, if a place is truly beautiful, ordinary people can't afford to be there.

Hillary Revealed That Women Can Be Nasty, Deceptive Candidates Too

Posted on: May 16, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

Hillary Clinton smashed the myth of innate female moral superiority in the worst possible way -- by demonstrating female moral inferiority.

Truck Drivers Block Freeway Traffic Across the U.S. to Protest Soaring Fuel Prices

Posted on: Apr 7, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

Faced with $4-per-gallon diesel fuel, truck drivers -- who deliver 70 percent of the nation's goods -- are hitting the brakes.

Hillary's Ties to Religious Fundamentalists

Posted on: Mar 19, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, Hillary Clinton is a lot more vulnerable than Barack Obama.

The Fall of the American Consumer

Posted on: Mar 11, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

We have been the world's designated shoppers, and, if we fall down on the job, we take the global economy with us.

Obama's Campaign: An Emotional Escape Hatch from the Bush Era

Posted on: Feb 15, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

When Americans vote for "change," what they're really saying is, "<i>Get us out of here!</i>"

The Boom Was a Bust for Ordinary People

Posted on: Feb 4, 2008, Source: The Washington Post

Our challenge isn't just to prop up stock prices but to rebuild an economy in which everyone shares the good times.

Clitoral Economics

Posted on: Jan 22, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

Ben Bernanke may not use this imagery, but the immediate challenge is how best to get the economy throbbing again.

Experts Warn of Recession -- Duh, We're Living in One Already

Posted on: Jan 9, 2008, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

Growth and productivity mean nothing when they are de-coupled from most people's lived experience: being squeezed.

What's So Great About Gated Communities?

Posted on: Dec 4, 2007, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

When we live in gated communities, are we keeping things out or just fencing ourselves in?

America's Rich Citizens Can't Escape Our Poor Public Infrastructure

Posted on: Nov 20, 2007, Source: Barbaraehrenreich.com

Can you spare a tear for the ultra-wealthy?

Writers Strike, Silence Falls

Posted on: Nov 14, 2007, Source: The Nation

The plight of the writers doesn't invoke the same sympathies as more blue-collar workers, but anyone who's willing to stand up to greedy bosses deserves our support.

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