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 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.
