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.
