End of The Book

It seems as though the book "The Working Poor," was leading us the reader somewhere.  With hundreds of pages detailing how miserable life is, and how stupid poor people are, etc, etc.  The only feasible ending, seemed to be to make the ending lighthearted and show that there is hope.  The author, David Shipler, however, decided to go the opposite route and ended the book saying that we should "Be ashamed."  This single phrase pretty much summed up the whole book.  It seems as though the author's main point of the book is to shame the readers.  To shame the readers into thinking that life in America his horrible for poor people, and there's rich capitalists that are going around taking advantage of everyone against their wills.  We should all be ashamed of ourselves for allowing this to happen, is the overall theme of the book.  But that's the thing, should "WE" be ashamed because other people are stupid/poor/lazy?   Shipler wants the reader to feel bad because people become drug addicts.  He wants people to feel bad that not everyone's motivated to work hard.  He wants everyone to feel bad that they've got an extra helping of rice on their plates, while a mother with fourteen kids, has to live off government welfare. 

The book details so many people who are poor, and who only survive off of government care, welfare, healthcare, etc.  The author, however, is trying to guilt the reader to believe that even though these poor people's rent is paid for, even though they get free food (for doing nothing) that we should still give them more, so they can be even wealthier and healthier poor people, and still not have to lift a single finger.

The main thing that I've gotten from this book is that there are poor people in America.  Poor people tend to have lots of kids, they tend to be uneducated, they tend to be minorities, and the patterns seem to persist through the generations.