More to the point, Adam was willing to live the way poor people actually live, rather than maintaining unreasonable middle-class lifestyle expectations (living in day motels!?) and whining about how being poor didn't pay the bills like Ehrenreich.
My main point here is that upper-middle-class people who go as far as Ehrenreich to argue that you just plain need an upper-middle-class income to get by are revealing more about their level of decadence than about the plight of the actual working poor. At best it's well-intentioned but patronizing--at worst it's just plain cynical.
Just to clarify: Barbara also wrote about others she met living in motels because of lack of money for a deposit. She wasn't the only one doing so.
Again, an explanation that made sense to me. At the extreme low end (using the analogy of quantum mechanical effects), effects of the lack of money will be different than the effects at a higher income level.
Just speaking for myself: if I had only $40 at the end of the night, I would check into a motel rather than go to a homeless shelter. AFAIK, there aren't an abundance of homeless shelters either, and they are populated by literally mentally ill people and I would be afraid for my safety. Not to mention the question of losing ones dignity by going to a homeless shelter. YMMV.
My main point here is that upper-middle-class people who go as far as Ehrenreich to argue that you just plain need an upper-middle-class income to get by are revealing more about their level of decadence than about the plight of the actual working poor. At best it's well-intentioned but patronizing--at worst it's just plain cynical.