When’s the last time you checked your paystub?
Most Americans don’t anymore. It can be hard to find them on HR websites. But Americans really should be checking their paystubs. Each of those deductions is a monument to fierce battles over what life should be like, on and off the job. They are also a reminder, every few weeks, that so much of what it has meant to be a citizen has been tied to the work that Americans have done.
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, speaks at the Charles River Museum on the history behind the deductions on our paystubs and their connections to American democracy and capitalism.
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer is a history professor at the University of Georgia, where she directs the Applied History program. She is broadly interested in the history of work, capitalism, and democracy in twentieth-century America, the subject of her most recent book, Work, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern America, as well as a theme in her research on student loans, the well-received Indentured Students.
