Oh, she's definitely a jackass. She's most famous for her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. In it, she pretends to be a poor person and tells us all how horrible it is. Unfortunately, the reason she has such a hard time is that she wants it to be hard. She lies to employers about her work experience (to say she basically has none...as a middle-aged woman), pretends she has no friends or family for support, uses marijuana (she never mentions how she afforded that while on her "experiment") and then complains about having to take a drug test as part of her application for work, etc. I hate that book with a passion. I agree with her about this Law of Attraction stuff and related bullshit, though.
Haven't read the book, but I don't see anything wrong in particular in talking about how much it sucks to have no money, no job experience, and trying to earn a living from people who make you piss in a cup. Isn't that all true?
I think you need to read the book. She makes every effort to fail and then complains about her failure. I have very little respect for that. At the end of the book, she uses her "experiment" as evidence that we need to grow our country's welfare apparatus. As for the drug test, I don't see why she (or anyone) would feel she has the right to do drugs and be employed by any other person regardless of that behavior. I'm fine if you want to complain about the fact that you can't do drugs and get hired, but if you are trying to succeed in life (as Ehrenreich was supposedly trying to do) and part of that success is getting the drug-testing job, then don't smoke marijuana right before your drug test. It's very simple.
I've got to disagree with you on the drug-testing business. If the government hadn't piloted that as part of the drug war, it wouldn't be happening. I think there's a huge authoritarian influence there (for example, if you do business with the government, you have to drug test your employees.) It would be one thing if the government wasn't driving it, but the government IS driving it. People who had pot on the weekend aren't risking your customers during the week, etc., and I think most businesses would recognize that if not for Federal policies.
FWIW, most of my work requires pissing in a cup, at least to get the job, and I'd like to be able to tell them to go to hell, but they'd have to tell the government to go to hell, and they're not going to do that. You might have something if it was a free market and the businesses were thinking for themselves, but that's not the way it is.
Addendum: Added the last paragraph.