The book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, is written by Barbara Ehrenreich. According to Barbara, it is an ignorant belief that low-wage jobs entail "unskilled" labor. It is very hard to live on a minimum-wage job, and it takes great efforts from the lowly paid laborers to survive. In the results of her investigation, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, she wonders if the current economic hardships America is facing will finally break our society's cycle of poverty and punishment.