Terkel's formulation refuses the false choice between survival and satisfaction—he's saying they're inseparable needs, not competing luxuries. Most people separate these concerns entirely: you work *for* money *or* you work *for* purpose, as though one must sacrifice the other. But he understood from decades of interviewing ordinary workers that a person laying bricks or answering phones or stocking shelves experiences their day as genuinely impoverished when no thread of meaning runs through it, regardless of whether the paycheck arrives. A nurse taking genuine care with a difficult patient, a janitor who notices what he's made clean, a cashier who remembers a regular customer—these people aren't indulging in luxury; they're meeting a human requirement as real as hunger.