Now you’ve heard of Adam Shepard
I enjoyed reading Charles Platt’s expose of what it’s really like to work at Wal-Mart — lack of unions and all.
At the end comes this gem:
If you haven’t heard of Adam Shepard ... His remarkable book Scratch Beginnings, now being promoted through scratchbeginnings.com, describes how he went through an experience far more gruelling than my brief flirtation with low-paying work.
He placed himself in a homeless shelter with $25 in his pocket, found a job as a day laborer, then worked for a moving company, and after 10 months had a pickup truck, an apartment, and $2,500 in savings.
His conclusion: People can still make it in the United States if they are willing to live carefully on a budget and work hard.
Somehow that kind of news is never as popular as denunciations of the free market written by professional handwringers ...
Indeed.
