"You know, after I wrote Nickel and Dimed, so many middle-class people would say to me: Oh, what's wrong with these people? Why do they take it? Well, they didn't just take it! Even if they expressed defiance in ways that were not too productive like laughing at the boss behind his back or regularly breaking little rules. With the white-collar people, though, it just seemed so internalized. I couldn't get over it, how beaten down people were, how they had internalized obedience. The fear of standing out in any way that might be noticed seemed to grip them."

That's Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed and now Bait and Switch, from "A Guided Tour of Class in America," an interview conducted by Tom Engelhardt for Mother Jones.

(Ehrenreich also now has a blog, of course.}