Untitled

August 3, 2007

Excerpt from The American Ruling Class, featuring Barbara Ehrenreich

BILL MOYERS: As you heard her describe it, Barbara Ehrenreich took on menial jobs at low wages for her book, NICKEL AND DIMED. Here is an extended look at the film, THE AMERICAN RULING CLASS, billed as "the world's first 'dramatic-documentary-musical.'"

BARBARA EHRENREICH: "Boys! What are you doing here? Checking up on me?"

MAN #1: "No, no we just stopping by on the way back."

BILL MOYERS: Here's a scene where Barbara Ehrenreich revisits the time she worked as a waitress.

BARBARA EHRENREICH: "Can I get you a drink?"

MAN #1: "Coffee."

MAN #2: "I'll have a coke please."

BARBARA EHRENREICH: "Coke it is."

BILL MOYERS: It's a satirical tour through the corridors of power, written by Lewis Lapham, the long-time editor of HARPER'S Magazine.

BARBARA EHRENREICH: "Coffee...Coke..."

MAN #2: "Thanks a lot."

BARBARA EHRENREICH: "So does he know what I am doing? What I am up to here?"

MAN #1: "I told him."

BARBARA EHRENREICH: "You can't feel too sorry for me because I am really a journalist. I am doing this briefly. But one of the very humbling things for me has been to learn really that there are no unskilled jobs. All jobs take skill and intelligence and experience. They're hard."

MAN #2: "So what was the end result? I mean did....do people...can you get by? In other words."

BARBARA EHRENREICH: "Not on the job's I've had. Right now I am already $100 dollars behind on the rent that I need to pay for my half sized trailer in the trailer park. So you know even living in a trailer park seems to me a little ambitious at this moment."

MAN #2: "But we are talking about the height of the last boom..."

BILL MOYERS:The film takes on our political and financial elites, the top of America's food chain, but it's all for a purpose: to remind us of those struggling just to make ends meet.

"Nicked and Dimed"

Nickeled and Dimed
Nickeled and Dimed
There's No Free Lunch
or overtime
We Just Get
Nickeled and Dimed

They're gonna pay me seven bucks an hour
to clean out everybody's shower
Wipe the counter
Make the beds an'
(an') Stack the shirts
And sell the bread
Or work the register
Pour Coffee
an' take orders for delivery
do the floors (and)
And greet the guests (and)
And wear the nametag on my chest

Nickeled and Dimed
Oh Nickel and Dimed
There's no free lunch or overtime
We just get nickeled and dimed
Now three shifts at $2.25 plus tips 'll be $150
And then two days at $80 makes $160
That's $310 a week
I got $650 in rent
and then $110 in gas and utilities
Two for food and groceries leaves
$25 a week for me

Nickeled and Dimed
Oh Nickel and Dimed
There's no free lunch and no free time
We just get nickel and dimed

Now it don't always seem fair to me
But I'll get through it if I try
I don't call this prosperity 'cause
we're just barely getting by
Until my daughter breaks a bone
or what if my old buick dies
or Verizon disconnects the phone
And they mess up my whole credit line

Nickel and Dimed
Oh, Nickeled and Dimed
There's no free lunch or overtime
We just get nickel and dimed

Nickel and Dimed
Nickeled and Dimed
There's no free lunch and no free time
There's no ladder I'm gonna climb
I'd rather lead a life of crime
than just get nickel and dimed.

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