this program is about one hour. >> host: i'm tracey ross, senior policy analyst at the center for american progress and i'm joined by linda tirado whose recent book, "hand to mouth: living in bootstrap america" just was released last week, right? >> guest: yes. >> host: congratulations.

the book is really kind of a long time in the making, editing the reason why we're here because of an essay he wrote last year. it was entitled why i make several decisions or poppy thoughts. cheney tells a bit about that? it was a response. >> guest: i actually come from the internet, and i was having a conversation with my friends after work one night and somebody brought up the iphone with food stamps, and what she said was i know i'm not supposed to judge people without. somebody remind me why because i'm feeling a little judge he. i kind of fired off a response and didn't really think of it, and then it started to get a good response. minister to get a weird response. and i got an incredible response and then i was on the front page of "huffington post" and in forbes. russia called, and israel called them and they have a fan base in

serbia, which is interesting to me, and then there was the want to write a book? and out i am interviewed about the book. >> host: right, yeah. here we are. tell us a bit about that book are coming, about the essay. why did you decide -- you heard similar comments before. >> guest: i was in a mood. that literally was it. somebody asked a question and i thought, i know the answer to this one and i'm incredibly worthy. so i often wrote responses of that length. maybe not quite that way, but fairly well-known for long comments. there was one. but that one in particular, for whatever reason adelman the original wording of the think i was responding to, but something about the wording made me think

i can explain this. and so i did. as much as i was capable of that 2:00 in the morning after longship, and that really was it. it was kind of a gut level like you, i know this one. and so off it when. i didn't get nearly as much fun as people give me credit for. >> host: the essay like the book gives us a tour of the things that poor people are judged for, everything from diet to work ethic, sex lives. and you got a lot of a guest criticism in response. a lot of people thought that how is this woman actually a low-income person? she so articulate. >> guest: you can't be poor and no words. >> host: exactly. people started digging into your background. how do that, about? even "the new york times" the question your credibility estimate yeah, which is really

interesting because in order to question the credibility of some of his is this is what poor feels like him have to say you don't look for. and to be able to say that you have an idea of what poor looks like which is interesting to me because working-class, folks with the minimum wage, it's like a third of american and we don't look like anything. we look like everything and everybody because we are all over the place. so the criticism i think was more projection than it was anything, because people wanted to be able to say poor looks like this other thing. poor looks like that over there. poor isn't skilled because we have a meritocracy, and if you're skilled you'll be successful. cracks don't exist in america and that was really the genesis of most of the criticism and the backlash is people's worst thing you are doing poor and probably. i was estranged from my parents for most of my adult life i didn't have family resources. hypothetically i did and eventually we reconciled when my

first daughter was born, but in the intervening years, i didn't have the family resources and it can have a degree, and i was working the service economy just like anybody else now. does the fact my child is was more comfortable than many children mean i did not experience that in the service industry, mean that i don't understand what it's like not to build your bills? how many years do you have to be able to not pay your bills to say that? people ask about the criticism a lot and i said i don't think it's criticism. i think it's defense mechanism of being able to say like well, you clearly just, you know. a lot of people grabbed onto that and said you made all the bad decisions and that's what you slid to the bottom but i say it's a mix of decision and what.

because if i'd been any disease where i could cover for my mistakes, like a lot of wealthy people can, i never would've slipped to the bottom. or if i had a spectacularly good looks i couldn't all the benedictions i wanted and it wouldn't have mattered. if you don't have the cushion and you are not, and you're not equipped to make great decisions. i left home when i was 16. how wonderful all the decisions of any seven chinook out on their own going to be? i always laugh when people are like you just didn't do it probably. okay, i'll tell you what, think about yourself at 16. now assume that you can do anything you want. you have no rules, like how long do you think you would have gone? probably as about as well as i did. so the criticism is always interesting to me because it tells you more about the person doing the criticizing than it ever does about you. here's what it comes down to.

i gave my welfare nation to the patient i given to the "washington post" the i gave an interview immunity. i took my damn teeth out of the to. i do not have anything more to prove because all i ever said was it stocks to work hard every day and never get anywhere. that's a true statement whether not i was a multimillionaire living in economy of whether i've never had a home in my entire life. it sucks to work or do not get anywhere. >> host: also part of the problem is when we hear the poverty rate, which has been set at about 50% of less so years. last year 14-point font. we tend to think it's the same 15% of americans. people are cycling in and out. only a small percentage of people are poor for those years that we are measuring. >> guest: is the most people are working-class will be in poverty technically five or six times over the course of their life. most people will get out under four years.

you can have those years, and getting a bad years and they come and they go and that's what working class in america is. >> host: i want to read a part of your book data think really captures what it's about and what you've been saying. what i can say for sure is that downward mobility is like quicksand. wants a crapshoot it keeps contender options until it's got you completely. i slid to the bottom through a mix of my own decision and some seriously bad luck. i think that's true of most people. while the consumer downward mobility is blocked by a lead sitting, delay between lower middle-class and poor is horrifyingly forest from above. what does that conjure up for you? because throughout the book it sounds like there is a level of anxiety that you can feel about being in poverty, a level of fatigue, and this constant fear

that you're going to get below -- >> guest: i'm so glad i came through. >> host: in hearing your own words back to you, what we thinking when you wrote that? >> guest: i was thinking about the flood when i wrote that. when i was pregnant with my first child and we discovered we were pregnant, and my husband he said to go back to school on the g.i. bill. he is recently home from iraq. we applied, we got into school and the clinton move to cincinnati and plan to live off this type and. for us we're supposed to be getting somewhere between 12 and 1400 a month or something. it was enough to barely live on. we could make it through this semester. by daughter was due three weeks after that first semester, and then the money never came.

there was a paper works screw up somewhere. so every week would go and say that this type and come? no, not this week. come back next we could eventually we both got jobs at a burger king locally and we got a crappy as part that we could find because we thought it would just be temporary because now we're going to get a huge check for the back bay, right? and be able to put down a deposit on a decent department -- apartment would be deadly for the kids. the money just kept not showing up all semester long. we were living in this awful apartment and there was this summer storm in ohio. the drains were not properly maintain in the building and everything can we live in the lowest apartment in the basement and everything we owned was pretty much destroyed in the flood and we had no money and we had no place to go. so we went to this weekly motel right next to our work and we

stay there, but we didn't have enough money to pay the rent on the motel and the rent on department. so that our landlord sued us for eviction on this apartment that was mold ridden because his version of taking care of the flood was just a maintenance guys in the shop back in top the windows open for a few days. which if you've ever been to ohio in the late summer, it's not an effective mold management technique. they're small to succeed up on the wall, crazy. and that is what i was talking about is what was in my head was knowing that our baby was on the way and we've done everything right. we had done everything right. it was nothing we didn't do right. we went to school. we have the funding in place. we get jobs. we have an apartment. we had a good life plan. we were going to be moving forward and then there was this spring storm and all of it was gone. all we had was some of the baby stuff that we salvaged when we

left, a carload of the baby stuff and that was what we had. >> host: you mentioned is earlier, but a third of americans are a flood or a paycheck or broken heart or sick child away from poverty. so your experience woven throughout the book i have to say in going into a come a moment a little skeptical reading a book where the person experiences almost supposed to represent a broader experience. i think do a good job of saying this is what i saw, but also balancing it with this is created for particular reason to this is how our systems are. so yes, this is my particular experience but it's also a common one on many levels. >> guest: i like to say that i am not representative. i am indicative. because these are things that you hear the variation of the flood from any poor person, anybody. you can walk up to any service work and tell me tell me about time your screwed by something totally out of your control the

tour all of your dreams of wins it you back by years. they will have one and it will be a flood, a sick relative, the time that they got laid off from the time they heard there back come something that everybody has more than one of them. they are interchangeable but it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter which store you are talking about or which time because something happened, and something is going to happen and something will always happen. so it's a question, being poor or being working class even at this point because we have sort of left or move upwards, right? it is always knowing that something is going to happen to you just don't ever really know when and you don't know what is going to look like and you don't know how bad it's going to be, but the one thing you can count on is that they're still going to take all the taxes out of your paycheck and something is going to happen. >> host: but the quote i read also you mentioned bad decisions

and bad luck. so bad decisions that you referred to throughout the book are maybe health related like smoking and drinking or other vices. you talk about having to deal with insurance settling after your car accident. do you ever get worried about playing into that i can stereotype, that poor people are doing it to themselves? you are candid about decisions that might not have been the best in the world. >> guest: i think for anybody to try to say that i am human and i've never made a bad decision in my life, i am a saint and you all should be a properly grateful for my perseverance and set off this. there's not a person on this work that has not made a few mistakes. there's a difference between rich people important is that when we make mistakes we cannot

cover them. you see an addict on the street. that's because he's not addicted enough to get into weeklong treatment program where there on the slots for the bbc -- dca rich addicted person? no. because they take a gap year and go to rehab or they take some personal time and make a rehab. the insurance covers it and they are in a nice place and they can stay for as long as they need to get healthy. it's not that we make different decisions, it's that we can't cover them in the same way. we pay for our decisions immediately, and we do in a way that wealthy people will never understand because they've never known what it is to know that if you screw up even in the slightest amount, it could be the point of view because it never is the that's what happened to me. that's a comfort and privilege or is never having to deal that fear in the pit of your stomach that this is the day you screwed everything up because the one time he made a mistake. look, retrospectively have i always make good decisions? absolutely not, but i've always made the decision that made

sense for me at the time. i haven't always had good information and i have it, listen, i've made decisions drunk. i'm not going to say that hasn't happened, but you haven't? how many marriages started from a drunken way? come on. so of course it's plai going ine stereotype for anybody who holds that stereotype and won't get read of the stereotype but those people aren't going t to hear wt i'm saying anyways i don't worry about them. if you were determined to find some in the history that explains the entire american economy and why so many people are trapped in it, please, you already living, like get your tinfoil hat out and put it on and then tell me about all of the conspiracies. >> host: there's one part, i want to read another part that maybe think of like what you were just discussing. it's ridiculous to make the argument that people should be able to predict every possible downturn in their lives and events. poor people are not uniquely psychic. and throughout the book you can't talk about how there's

superhuman expectations from low income people while simultaneously being treated like some humans. that comes across a lot in different work situations that you describe, minimal wage work generally. i think many people know the minimum wage hasn't decreased in its value by 30% from the '60s. not only is it a low number, it's worth less than it once was, and yet you're expected to come as the title suggest, lift yourself up from your bootstraps. can you talk a bit of much work experience and how hard this was? >> guest: sure. to begin with i use the bootstrap metaphor because, to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps, you need able to levitate, all right? and her hands aren't going to be free to steady that latter. essentially what you're saying is do the impossible in the least safe way possible and did you manage that then you are

okay. at work and we are interchangeable. we are made to feel interchangeable. we are told how interchangeable we are. the passenger service industries at this point, especially at large companies, it's not filtered down to the mom-and-pop so much but the large companies have software that tells you within 15 minutes comedy people need to have on staff. so we are told him okay, you need to be here at 12:15. we don't know how long we're going to keep you because you are on the schedule until say i don't know, to 30 because that's as much as we can afford to have you but we might need you to stay until five or it's possible you will get you in this load and will send you back home again. because your time is a valuable to us. our profit margin is so valuable that we need you to like to dictate and plan your life around our profit margin. and in exchange for that we're going to give you as little as legally possible. and not only that, we're going

to make it cumbersome and honors. we will have you sign contracts that wasn't we don't want you to get a second job because we might want to come in at 7 p.m. one night. i have signed contracts like that it will give you 20 hours a week, no more, because then we would have to pay health insurance. there are no benefits or sick days. you are contractually obligated to come in whenever we call you. what you have a 20 minute window to get here, and if you get a second chance you are fired to but we are paying you $7.25 and julie to 20 hours. they expect us to make that work and people expect us to not rage. added understand how you going to put restrictions on somebody like that. people who have working brains n seconds of ridiculous the whole thing is, not only that you will dehumanize them and tell them if you complain, there are another 100 of you outside the door and we don't care which is using to because none of you have any more value than anybody else, right? how many times any service worker can take, they have heard

at the store honey, i have a stack of applications all mile high. we are not allowed to make mistakes but we are not allowed of lives. we are not allowed to goals or dreams or plans. if we do we are punished for thinking outside of a class, for thinking about what this profit margin is. but if we don't do it and we're not engaging and we're not burning it and we don't want it bad enough. look, work is indicative of the rest of our lives. it's another place that we are a human. not inhuman, but i'm human to we are drones. that's what we are there to be. they have done these studies i can service work like he had to go and just to be friendly but not onto the polite and nice but you could actually welcome people as though it were in your home and you make them feel warm and welcome. no matter what kind of day you were having, no matter what kind an aspect that customer isn't happy to check it in studies that tell us that performing

that kind of emotion actually build your ability to feel it. because you start having to lose track between what you feel and what you are thinking. and so we worked lead early stops us of our ability to feel joy for $7.25 an hour. screw $7.25. we talk about the minimum wage. do you know how many people are working for $7.35 or $7.60? >> host: on top of that you mention you can be fired for the simplest of reasons. i think there's a belief that if you're fired that means you did something wrong, but you mentioned being fired, i don't know if it's you or someone you knew because the paperwork was done wrong or something. >> guest: i personally have had to fire somebody because yet another job, and her other manager wouldn't do the schedule, more than a day than the new workweek started.

she was a great employee. she was fantastic. she was one of those actually, the people who are not like me, actually like a sunshiny person. and she was fantastic. couldn't keep her on the schedule. she couldn't make it in often in the. we said will keep it as a call on employee and then we just didn't hit her often enough where she was training for every time she came is like the first time she'd been in the door and she wasn't making any progress and we couldn't afford. so i had to let her go. that was a woman who is raising her own child. i mean, she was on her own and had to look at her and say i'm so sorry, i can't help sorry, i can't help you feed your baby comfy though your fantastic. >> host: clearly you're sympathetic to that but given how everything is setup it was almost out of your hands it seems like treachery is. you have these labor targets to you as a manager. you're allowed ask about persons of yourself can go to labor. if you're over that then you lose your job and listen, i managed a restaurant the i'm a

$28,000, which is not nothing. you can keep people on that but if you're working 90 hour week for $20,000 you're desperate enough to do that, can you afford to lose your job? probably not. it's probably the best job you've ever had. that physically punishing, mentally torturous job is 90 hours a week for 28,000 the week is because job you've ever had to you can't afford to lose the. then you have to do these things to these people and you just came from where they are. you know exactly is going to do to their lives and to understand all of that and you do it anyway. because you've got your own family to the. >> host: giving everything that you know about how hard it is to work, how you can get fired for anything, what does that make you feel about these fast food worker stress going on? it seems like a huge burden on the shores of people who are working incredibly hard and need

their wages raise and get there pushing the movement themselves also at the risk of being fired. >> guest: we do everything i suspect nobody is going to help us. are you kidding me? nobody is going to help us. we have to do ourselves. more than that we get to do it or sells. you watch people walk out. they are going to lose their jobs. they're going to be retaliated against the that is common knowledge. nobody, nobody even cares mentioned a union at a restaurant without understanding that they're about to lose their job. we don't even go desperate when we are ourselves we don't go to work or whatever you call it, depend on the state which are able to go to workers comp, go see doctor. you don't do that. you don't do that because very shortly you will find yourself being written up for the smallest infraction and they will have you out the door in a couple of months. these people are genius and able to do. they're able to stand outside their work and say we are worth more than this and you will give us the respect we deserve

because we keep this economy running. all my god, the rush of being able to say that. it's essential what i do for a living a. i did to stand up as i am worth more than this. i have more potential. i have more to give than this. and i deserve more than this because i've earned it. and to be able to say that for the first time, oh, the things these people are feeling. they are scared, lonely, shocked, angry, frustrated but they're also for the first time standing up and taking some of the respect they deserve and that is a feeling that is very, very good. so i think that they are doing it because we need to change the economic situation, but also because they can. just to say. sometimes you just have to say it. and i would love to see the. i love the. i love every bit of it, and i hope to god that everybody who's ever said i wish there was something i could do that on the

bases, walks up to this restaurant workers outside those restaurants and says hey, here's my number. there's a job waiting for you when you are done here aspect absolutely. back to the book itself, it's organizing a really interesting way. it's not anymore. it's not chronicling your extremes and for. it's organized by what poor people are judged for. >> guest: yeah. i actually just asked a bunch of rich people, still a poor person and i took that and we kind of structured that way. because what i think happens is the poor are judged for what our human behaviors. again because we do it in the open but everything that we do is open to inspection to open the data. would have to report things to everybody constantly. -- constantly. there's no such thing as privacy. if you're poor we're used to being opened. we are pretty open about all of the things that we do, all the good and bad a moral or immoral

or anything like that. i just took the things that i thought were the biggest bugaboos and i said here's why you don't get to judgment on this and this and this. >> host: one of the chapters is on children, and i think that's one of the things that you often. why are you having so many kids? i can but there have been so many kids. you have an interesting argument to this about, you know, of course it's hard to raise children, but again we are not uniquely psychic, just as rich people can predict that they might get divorced. we can't predict that we might become poor and later on, but there are tons of unintended pregnancies amongst low income teenager still while the overall rates dropped among teens, it is increase. how do you reconcile the fact that it really is hard to be poor and have children with the

fact that poor people should be able to lead the lives that they want country there are three or four taking -- different argues. the first is almost like you can't get access to birth control and i expect people to get pregnant it's almost like if you don't teach kids about sex, they might have some unprotected and then go be some unintended consequences. i would personally like to thank every moral crusader who has ever said we shouldn't say the word genius or vagina in high school and then we're going to blame them when sperm happens but that's incredibly silly. but more than that i think the arctic that there is we don't think you are valuable enough to be able to reach children, right? that's we get a lot of that is like you can't even take of yourself, how are you going to take care of a kid? i would be perfectly capable of taking care of myself if you put in a situation which i could find work that is going to pay my bills.

the trouble with poor people is that they don't have very much money. it's not that we lacked integrity, it's not that we lack knowledge, it's not th that we k intellectual capacity. we liked opportunity and if you're going to tell me that a fat bank balance is what paul fight me to be there, and i would point you to a number of abuse or terrible, terrible, horrifyingly how many poor little rich kid stories to your? being rich doesn't make you prepared even more than -- anymore than being poor make sure that there. thirdly, how much money is enough to qualify you for parenthood? give me an amount the it's what 230 grand or something, birth all the way up through college is what they are assuming. i know an awful lot of people who would consider themselves early middle class who did not have $230,000 in the bank to save for a rainy day in just in case have a problem with the child. ..

and then you've got a guy, two kids, not of their girlfriends. one of them is selling his oats and one is an incredibly irresponsible person who's going to be a monster. one thing brings me to another topic i want to talk to you about. the criminalization of the poor.

so i'd know that there's been a lot of tackling recently that you see women who have been arrested a case that kept their children in a car while they were in a job interview, let their kids play in the park while they were at a job interview or at work. in your experience, how do you feel this now plays into the calculation of four people on a daily basis, and knowing it's a crime to be poor essentially. >> guest: this is where race comes into play because it's so much worse to be poor and black and poor and white. i did not get hassled by the cops as much as my black friends. that is how we do policing in america. we know that they are targeting folks, they are saying you are not worth being on our streets. we would rather warehouse you would pay for you that way. but the example i like to use

because it is clearest is homelessness. it is illegal to sleep, to, to do anything if you are homeless. they criminalized it entirely. here is how it affects everybody. so you get drunk at a bar, you have one too many. tommy you haven't done that at least once. i'm not talking stumbling drunk. you should drive home. but there are no cabs because you're not in a big, big city and it's too far to walk. but you think you can get yourself there. if you walk on your publicly intoxicated. if you choose to drive him come you are driving strong. if you sleep in your car, your sleeping in public. there is no good option for you to get home if you have one too many in a bar because we have criminalized all of these behaviors that you could use to get home with. it is a crime. you can be arrested for not paying your electric though. you can go to jail for not

paying your rant. we talk about america and i will tell you this. you go to court on a fiver because you couldn't pay a bill of menu refuse to pay the bill again as though it's not just a matter of money. he will sit there until you have enough money to bail yourself out. then they tell you how much money you'll spend. it's insane how easy it is to go to jail. i will say this, if you have two people had one too many in one of them is wearing prada shoes and one dissuade them workers, like restaurant while march's commodities and the cops will be nice to? are their data and statistics? probably. i don't know. anecdotally i will tell you are treated better the private shoes. >> you've mentioned a number of different laws. in arkansas you can get arrested for not paying your rent.

there is a lot going through the state legislature in louisiana that makes it a crime to be homeless, they would have to pay $600 fine or go to jail for being outside. >> guest: because homeless people totally have with her. >> host: another thing in the newsbrief millet, i don't know if you saw "the new york times" did a story on subprime auto loan for now we have this device that shuts down cars if you haven't paid your loan payment. and yeah, you talk about in the book how dependent you are on your vehicle to be able to get to work. all along the path towards independence, towards earning money, there's a roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. >> guest: paul ryan has this new opportunity grant out. i read it. at one point someone is the

acronym og and so now he is og paul ryan. he had this plan and it is essentially a life coaching, right? one of the things i run into most often with charity and something i've been involved in with my friends and coworkers, anytime i've heard anything about it, they assume we don't know how to live properly. they're going to teach us how to get jobs. what is that do for someone on food stamps because their arty work in a judge that the majority are already working. we have active-duty military personnel on food stamps. tommy did got an extra 20 or 30 hours to do reporting and show up for a life skills class. to me that is an counterproductive in a giant waste of money. when you talk about systemic poverty, a lot of people might an essay from life coaching and

real experience because there's an opportunity barrier and there is a societal difference. the speech differently in the different classes in different names mean different stuff. listen, i can tell you how many time i behaved inappropriately and they are very gracious to me about it. if i hadn't, being officially a poor person, or everybody when i walk in a room knows that i don't know these rules, it would exclude me from those jobs of those opportunities. a lot of cases would be a helpful program. the question i have is how do we decide who needs this program and why are we assuming that all poor people do with that of some poor people buyer for not saying if you want this coming data is available to you. once you make better hiring a quite onerous than a waste of taxpayer money. so profusely with all these programs and charities that are

incredibly well-meaning and too broad sleeping change to poor people's lives. some of them are helpful, some of them get your resources. but i'll tell you this, if you are living on charity and welfare, it takes more time to do that reporting to make a patchwork of the programs available to other various refinements than it does to find her. and you can't find work because you're so busy proving to the state that you can't find work. at one point in my life come about after the flood i applied to a charity program for furniture for the apartment and they said we need 40 hours a week. they said for a while? you've got this paperwork to do. 20 hours of job searching. i sent her to have a job. i just don't have any money. they said you have to do 20 hours of job searching her dog apply for the program. i set ird house work and i have a new board and then work 34 hours a week. pages that take paperwork. it'll be fine.

>> host: it was counterproductive to the goals of the program. yasser arafat is the thing that we see a path. counterproductive to the program. it's funny you talk about all these programs have provided plan touches on. there's also this conservative refrain. so they're going to refrain the system. >> guest: everybody wants to work part-time jobs and get humiliated constantly every day. i would say that's the goal of the average american and it's only the poorest people that have figured out this week on a street government cheese. we are the smart ones in the room. honestly i don't understand why everybody does and welfare. it's super comfy. rich people, telling you this right now.

quit your jobs and on welfare. most of it then you have to find another job to prove you deserve all this. >> guest: blushes not talk about it. everybody quit their jobs and go on welfare. if there were that comfortable you wouldn't see so many people telling us how comfortable it was. they were doing it themselves because if they run our economy and our world and government, they would be smart enough to take the opportunity. they are foods shoppers, entrepreneurs. they run things. it's really weird. >> host: you're actually at the white house earlier this year. we're talking about policy. [inaudible] >> host: that's one way to be memorable. if there's a policy change or something you could talk to president obama about and what you hope to see in the remainder

of his administration. >> guest: click to see more talk about what america is supposed to be. john locke would be really pay status right now because when you have a government that is intolerable, that treats citizens as though they are not in charge of the government versus the other way of outcome you have metal the way the responsibility to fight back. i was the entire basis and i don't know the entire country. what we talk about is the meritocracy as though we still have that. show up in any job one day and be responsible and you would be fairly successful. that is not a true thing anymore. if i could tell the president anything i would say it time to the knowledge that. it doesn't exist anymore. that is not what america is for a lot of us, or millions. 45 million of us don't get the american dream. we get to feel as though a

covert charter maybe we would qualify for the american dream. that is not the promised. that's not the intent and barack obama has the sweeping rhetoric. obama has inflamed the populace. that's how we got elect you. i would've liked to seen him give a speech talking about what it is to work in america and why we need to change it. >> host: at the look of the numbers over the past four years we've had some economic growth, but wages are still declining for the middle-class is stagnant. you really only see the top five. >> guest: the stock market is going gangbusters in quarterly profits are back to where they need to be so america is fine. >> host: one of the things you mention in the book, almost in passing is that your husband was in the military. is there any reason why you didn't dive deeper into the fact that you were a military family,

something that people from both sides of the aisle would find disgraceful that a family who served the country could be living in poverty. is there a reason you didn't dive into that too much? >> guest: a lot of families who serve honorably are living in poverty and that's not my story to tell. that is his story to tell. i went viral. didn't have a nice discussion and decide to write this book and it's not my story to tell. i waited while he was in falluja and became okay and he came home more okay than a lot of guys. if we are going to tell a story about the military of poverty, we are going to talk about the va scandal in the millions of americans who served in served honorably and came home and did nothing medical care. the worst that happened to us as we didn't get a living faith in. that is the worst that happened to us. should that happen? absolutely not.

is it an outrage? you that your asset was calling a lot of people. i was really angry and i made sure everybody heard about it. but that is not the worst of it. the worst of just the guys who came home and cannot live anything resembling a normal life and i did not want to step on most days. so i didn't touch on it very much because the story of the military and how we treat our returning veterans is so much bigger and so different than the story of how we treat our service workers that i didn't feel it was an issue i needed to tackle. >> host: the book is organized in the terms people are judged for. he did talk about simmons with landlords ukiah. there could've been a section on so many different things, but you included a section on sex. what makes you want to have that? each interesting a lot of books talk about poverty, i don't think that the new chapter. >> guest: love, we are restricting out access to birth

control at an insane level in having discussions about whether poor people have children? must be honest we are not talking about children. we're talking about the races. the thing important to me was to say we are about to be human. sometimes sex results in children, but even when it doesn't come you don't get to say why are you in a relationship with that person? we heard that a lot, too. because they would have me and i liked them. why is anyone in a relationship with anybody? were the mac of the weak enough to be more responsible than anybody else and that's the basis of the chapter if i have to be as responsible as everybody else. how many one night stands have been in swanky bars? of a lot of them. the book itself is to say you cannot more or less than your decisions are no better than mine. and so, sex.

>> host: you talk about the people you have access to, the people who are poor wouldn't be you talk about the pretty woman example. you're not going to be a millionaire that's going to change your life and yet there's lots of ideas and policies that poor people need to get married is not the silver bullet. >> guest: marrying somebody who's not fantastically supportive that you don't particularly like or care for because marriage is what you should do. i encourage that in all cases. look, we are about to be a track day to who we want to be attracted to on the basis of terms we set for ourselves. we don't have a lot of bodily autonomy. we give away bits of ourselves. we sell ourselves. that is where you go to get $35 you sell it a bit of yourself and watch her blood go through

the machine and separated it pumps your blood back into you and the whole time you wonder is this actually telling myself? yes, yes i am. once you are dealing on that level where you're literally selling yourself for money, why wouldn't you get laid? you came off a long shift and gave away a bunch of plasma for 30 bucks. you want to smoke and get laid. you've had a long day. to put that out there and say sometimes i deserve to get laid. like its cool, everybody does it. why are you out so much about it. if that were an irresponsible decision rather than a human one, why do we not need companionship? do you have any idea what i go through in a day? >> host: there's probably a lot of people they might not be watching us, but people that it

would be offputting to them. so your audience must be people who are already compassionate to this idea. where do you hope is going to read this book? yes coworkers. i hope the people who know what this book says get to read a i hope those people is the one us saying it out loud and publicly and privately likely i'll watch the service workers walk out, i hope they watch me in this book and watching me say things that are offensive or offputting to people that we normally lower our eyes in front of and try not to offend because we shouldn't exist in front of them. we are not allowed to have lives and be humane and be messy in front of people that are better than us. not going to do it anymore. and i want them to see me. now if some people who are compassionate and think about these issues who are luckier and

work in these industries have made the work in service to these people, social workers, things like that read this to learn something, i am glad you have a bunch of people read this and get angry and offended him i'm glad because maybe they'll ask somebody how dare you assert your humanity and i love that question. people come to me and say how dare you be human. on august 26, 1982 was brought forth into this world and thusly i am human. go ahead and delegitimize that appeared a dare you. people read it or they won't read it and know if you're about it or they won't hear about it and they have the reactions i have, but the important thing is we never got to talk about it. you never have a poor person stand up and say a few men in the public square. we are not allowed to do this frequently.

so that really is the nature of that. somebody called me borrow 10 everybody talks about how angry i am. it is not that i am angry. it is that people when they see somebody asserting their own self-worth and you have to do it a little loudly you have to be a little pricey because otherwise no one will pay attention or get value, you are automatically angry. that's marginalization. you see it in race, class, sexual orientation. any marginalization. they stand up and say no, no, no. everybody says why are you so angry all the time? i can't imagine. i have no basis for that whatsoever. i mean, come on. throughout the book in our conversation, you refer to

obviously your life taken a big turn because of the book and you're an msnbc this morning and doing all this media appearances. how are you reconciling this change in your head because it sounds like he is still strongly identify with being a working-class or poor american, but your circus dances are rapidly changing. tesco as an authorized that 10 years in the service industry. clearly, i am not scrubbing friars everyday, for which i think god. but you can take the girl out of the working class, but you can't take the class that is the girl. i will probably stop saying we when i stop feeling as though this is a site i am included in when i have learned the entitlement of the upper classes and that is really what it comes down to is i don't feel any different. it is just that my surroundings are nice outcome which is

awesome and lovely. but my fight in the themes i am saying are so broadly shared and i have experience so long that it's hard for me to flip a switch and separated. so what you're talking about i've asked myself a lot is how you will handle those and what will i do. what i find is when i'm so there were some interviews that i can't think of any those things. >> host: i really like that because i was watching an interview you did and it's great that you're talking about people like you. it didn't seem to faze even the interview or at least on your face, but it was kind of jarring to hear because there was a separate. as you've said throughout, a third of americans are on the verge of going deeper into poverty, so it's not even us versus them kind of thing. it's about most people know

someone or admit. >> guest: i do these appearances to go to these places and talk to these people and everyone of them has a poor story for me. they'll take me aside privately contact me about the relative circuit who isn't doing well, their neighbor or someone they know. i wonder how come everybody knows somebody and we don't change anything. how is this possible? i realize it's because we don't talk about it. everybody is ashamed of it. it's like having abortion in your past and it's still 1970. everyone quietly keeps it to themselves because they don't want to be associated with it. worth it not, i walk into the serbs and people are automatically like it is the poor girl. i'm like okay working class, thank you. poverty is different that working class although they are closely intertwined and close

together. and yet, it is for chicks. let me tell you. >> host: so what are you hoping his next for you? you said you were working on these issues now. what are you doing? but his next? >> guest: i hope that i keep writing. that would be fantastic to a recently partnered with react radio, which is a great organization in d.c. to spotlight these issues a little bit more. but wound up in ferguson and have been incredibly impressed by the brazilian said grace under more pressure than i've ever faced in my entire life and the things they are building and doing. so there's a lot of situations like ferguson that we don't get coverage of and i've been

finding those and trying to platform them as much as possible. that is what the work is doubtless finding people who need to talk and giving the platform i've been given because honey, they gave me a giant asp platform. asked platform. i look at people at wesley. i do have a website. i'm not, what we are doing is having everybody i meet write something and everybody who can no say in every web that i can recall, if it's the same experience i have, we are platforming at because the plaintiff isn't just me. i am not at all representative. there is millions of us. we respond differently. i smoke. one of my best friend goes to church. i think she's crazy. that is how i feel with the pressure. the situations are the same and what we need to prove and we have to prove if it is

inescapable and not uniform, that all these things are the same across the state, across and come back at, generations, races. my goal is to get as many thousands of us as possible to tell her story so we can present it. here you go, america. here is a microcosm of it. i dare you to read this and don't think there's a problem when you're done. >> host: the book is "hand to mouth: living in bootstrap america." i thought it was a really great read. i read in a few hours. your writing is great. you're able to capture great things, but also there's tons of funny parts. >> guest: maybe don't read it out loud to your children at bedtime. there's a whole chapter in sex. that's all i'm saying. >> host: is wonderful talking to you.

>> guest: thank you so much. it was great.

>> but i think you have it on the head there races definitely used to be a conversation that we have across lines that definitely is not. folks don't know what to say. folks are passé. did we do that already? is not a previous generations fight and struggle? so you know, now we have a think an age where it's not taken as seriously. we are sort of beyond now.

this is happy and like with a brother of the summer, the joke was they would say some day and completely racist and said that was so racist i'm just kidding. when did we get to a point where you could say, you completely disrespect a group of people and then chase it with that was just a joke. it's completely mind boggling to me that we are at the point that there's no -- i think the thinking is we are inserted this pc world where people don't want to sms. i don't think we're at that point anymore because i think folks think we are so beyond where we really are that there's no shame anymore. if you put in lol after rick, it is fine. thinking about races always been a black-white story.

america is not a black-white country. there shades of brown and different thinking and even within blackness, there's a diversity of blackness and they come from all different countries and not different households. that discussion about race is too different to how appeared and said how appeared in status one yelling at the other side saying this is okay. what i was thinking about recently is about school segregation, your state is the most segregated in the country. it is not new news. ..

>> the next three hours are your chance to talk with author and historian michael korda. the former editor-in-chief of simon & schuster is the author of numerous best selling books, both nonfiction and fiction. the oxford graduate will discuss his books on toes car winning film makers -- on the oscar winning film makers of his family. >> host: michael korda, who is alex kellner? >> guest: alex kellner was the name that my uncle, alexander