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Quote by Barbara Ehrenreich

“Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying... We've shopped till we dropped alright, face down on the floor.”

Quote by Barbara Ehrenreich

Author

Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich is an American political figure born on August 26, 1941. She is known for her activities in labor movements, social justice, and gender equality. more

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“Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American culture. Some say it was in the twenties, when advertising became a major industry and the middle class bought radios to hear the ads and cars to get to the stores. ... But there is no question that the consumer culture had begun to crowd out all other cultural possibilities by the years following World War II.”

Source: FEAR OF FALLING

“When our children are old enough, and if we can afford to, we send them to college, where ... the point is to acquire the skills not of positive thinking but of critical thinking.”

Ifs Thinking Children Enough Positive Thinking College Skills Our Children Intelligence Critical Acquire Critical Thinking

Author:Barbara Ehrenreich

“It's even occurred to me, as a teeny little subversive whisper of a thought, that if we stop mowing the lawn right now, it will probably be a long, long time before the yard gets overrun by lions and snakes.”

Ifs Littles Long Right Now Long Time Lions Yards Snakes Lawns Subversive Housework Mowing Mowing The Lawn

Author:Barbara Ehrenreich

“Marriage probably originated as a straightforward food-for-sex deal among foraging primates. Compatibility was not a big issue, nor, of course, was there any tension over who would control the remote.”

Bigs Courses Sex Deals Issues Tension Straightforward Primates Compatibility Foraging

Author:Barbara Ehrenreich

“Americans love marriage too much. We rush into mariage with abandon, expecting a micro-Utopia on earth. We pile all our needs onto it, our expectations, neuroses, and hopes. In fact, we've made marriage into the panda bear of human social institutions: we've loved it to death.”

Needs Humans Made Facts Earth Social Too Much Bears Expectations Institutions Abandon Expecting Utopia Neurosis Marriage Love Social Institutions Pandas

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“In a process that had begun in the 1980s and suddenly accelerated in the early 2000s ... [t]he peaks of great wealth grew higher, rising up beyond the clouds, while the valleys of poverty sank lower into perpetual shadow. The once broad plateau of the middle class eroded away into a narrow ledge, with the white-knuckled occupants holding on for dear life.”

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Book:Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation

Source: Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation

“in our culture, the professional, and largely white, middle class is taken as a social norm - a bland and neutral mainstream - from which every other group or class is ultimately a kind of deviation.”

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Book:FEAR OF FALLING

Source: FEAR OF FALLING

“Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of 'traditional values' installed. ... the poor and the middle class were shaken down, and their loose change funneled blithely upwards to the already overfed.”

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Author:Barbara Ehrenreich

“Money does not bring happiness' - only the wherewithal, perhaps, to endure its absence.”

Doe Endure Absence

Book:FEAR OF FALLING

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“Whether you work outside the home or not, never tell them [your children] that being a mommy is your 'job.' Being a mommy is a relationship, not a profession.”

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Book:WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

Source: WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES