Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America is about her cross-country odyssey as a voluntary member of the working poor. Ehrenreich believes that even as poverty rates - and income inequality - climb, it's only getting harder to be poor. Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland has selected Ehrenreich's groundbreaking study of our nation's working poor for the 2014 Tacoma Reads community reading program.Throughout the month of October, the Tacoma Public Library has been hosting book discussions in various forms, covering topics such as income inequality, the death of the American Dream, the destruction of the middle class and certainly the battle to raise the minimum wage. The battle to increase the minimum wage is everywhere, from global fast food worker protests and new local minimum wage laws to executive orders and passionate speeches by politicians. What is the impact of raising the minimum wage on workers and businesses? Will it substantively address rising inequality and the broad decline of the middle class or, as some assert, result in more youth unemployment, higher prices and increased automation? Discuss it.

WASHINGTON'S MINIMUM WAGE CONUNDRUM DISCUSSION, 7 p.m., Olympic Room, Tacoma Public Library Main Branch, 1102 Tacoma Ave. S., Tacoma, free admission, 253.292.2001