Michael D. Yates is a former professor of Economics. He is the author of
Naming the System: Inequality and Work on the Global Economy (2003),
Why Unions Matter (1998) and
Longer Hours, Fewer Jobs (1994). Following his retirement, Yates and his wife, Karen, set off to do what many of us have dreamed, touring thirty states, twenty-five national parks and monuments, numerous cities, small towns, suburbs and exurbs. Having spent time working as a $6.25 per hour desk clerk at Yellowstone, having stayed in cheap hotels and cooked on two-burner hot plates, Michael Yates has written an economist's travelogue, an account of the beauty and wonder of the parks, beaches, small towns and big cities he has visited, shadowed by his observations on the inequality, alienation, and environmental despoliation he and his wife witnessed.
What Michael Yates has to say reveals, beyond statistics and case studies, the day-to-day lives of ordinary, working-class people on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate brings a fresh perspective to the broadening debate on how class works in America today. This is a great book--a road story for radicals. It makes you itch to hit the road.
