That book was well written but incredibly condescending to people who do live those lives and don't get to 'abort the experiment' when they aren't comfortable with the step down in lifestyle anymore. And obviously there are millions of people who live on those wages in the real world, not in the fiction she created for herself. She was obviously trying to make a point about the difficulty of being poor or 'working poor' which is hard to dispute. Obviously it is difficult being poor and it always has been.

The real questions of import are left completely unanswered in that book: what meaningful policy changes can be made to increase jobs, training, education, lower costs (that's a big one--she never mentions the supply side at all) and other meaningful metrics that actually move the needle rather than merely evince patronizing sympathy from her Prius-driving, suburb-occupying, Ivy League-educated audience.