$ 2 A Day Essay

In the United States, Americans are painfully aware that poverty is a massive upsurge. Americans are getting poor and poor by the minute and that’s a problem. In the book “Men We Reaped” Jesmyn Ward explains that society sees our life being worth nothing. If I had the choice to change poverty I would raise the minimum wage so more people would want to work and the money can at least accommodate for a 3 house family with one person working.

Madonna Harris, Susan Brown, Kaitlyn  Hernandez, and Jessica Compton families were all robbed their dignity, self worth and separate from the rest of society because of social incorporation in America’s government. These individuals suffered from poverty physically and emotionally with little to none assistance from the government. The novel “2.00 a day” written by Kaitlyn Edin, a Professor of sociology and public health who had also teamed up with the survey expert on low income communities, Luke Shaefer to assertion that American poverty has groundbreaking research. In which, evidence show social incorporation within government programs that are unequal and undergoes extinction.Throughout the novel, one will learn about individuals,

McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and cleaning services: all of these have one thing in common-they are all minimum wage jobs. Their pay is low and work load high, and because of this living as a low wageworker is never easy. One must handle many hardships in order to make a few meager dollars, with which most cannot sufficiently live. 'The 'living wage' in the United States is between $9-10.18; sounds great to a college student, but in the real world this kind of money just isn't going to cut it,' (Ramisch). Minimum wage standards for American workers rest at $5.15 per hour, and in such slighted fields, very few make much more than that, perhaps $6-7, but even that is a rarity. The material life of a low-income employee includes bare necessities

What would our lives hold if we live below the poverty line? What would the future hold? Would we be able to provide even the simplest and most basic human need to our family?

What must the U.S. economy look like, when viewed through the everyday experiences of the working poor? Is America the land of opportunity or simply an economic trap from which there is little chance of escape? Taking a short view of the economy, where one low-wage job looks much like another and mobility is a challenge, the working poor are in an economic vise; squeezed by high prices for basic commodities like housing, food and gasoline on one end and unable to change their basic job situation on the other.

Although it is not difficult for the wealthy to increase their wealth, for those in or near poverty, the possibility of economic mobility becomes nearly impossible. The federal minimum wage in the United States is seven dollars and twenty-five cents per hour, however, that wage falls far below what has been determined to be a living wage. Using MIT’s living wage calculator, the minimum salary for a family of four with two adults working minimum wage jobs would need to increase between $15,000 and $40,000 to achieve an income that is considered “livable.” The probability of an individual bettering their situation financially, when they can’t even afford to live above poverty, is highly unlikely. Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America, conducted a social experiment, putting herself in the life of the working poor, presenting how it is essentially impossible to live comfortably while working a minimum wage job. In the book, she shows the daily struggles of the working poor while contrasting it with her day to day life. Despite the flaws of her social experiment, she is able to present some of the invisible struggles of those in poverty. Her findings align with Shipler’s observations about home environment and the other factors that contribute to decreased upward mobility for those in poverty. In The Working Poor, Shipler highlights some of the critical factors that limit upward mobility for the poor, such as education. Shipler explains that both poor education systems and having parents who did not graduate from high school decrease graduation rates and opportunities later in life. In addition, stressful living situations, to include abuse and addictions, greatly affect children and often have repercussions in later life. Ehrenreich is able to effectively present the issues in the industries that employ minimum wage workers

“Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich reveals the shocking truth of trying to live on minimum wage in the United States. Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist, decides to experiment living on a low-income job after discovering the welfare reform legislation in 1996. She tries to survive on minimum wage for a month in three US cities; Key West, Portland, and Minneapolis. In Key West Florida, she learned about the challenges of working in a lower class job and trying to “get by.” The only way to afford basic necessities is by having two jobs or to have someone help pay, such as a working husband.

After reading the book $2.00 a Day, Living on Almost Nothing in America. I was surprised to learn about the amount of people living below poverty in the United States of America. There are two sociological concepts that can be used to interpret this book. Social Class, and Conflict Theory. Social class is demonstrated by the lifestyle and perception of which social class you belong and how those of a different social class treat those of a lower class in addition to the struggle of those in the underclass which entails the harshest lifestyle with the almost certainty of never leaving the underclass. Conflict theory is demonstrated between the struggle of those who depend on Welfare, WIC and

In America today, millions of people suffer from a lack of basic needs due to a shortage of reasonably paying jobs. A growing percentage of Americans are falling below the poverty line, and, in recent years, the rapid growth of technology is destroying blue-collar jobs. For example, 55-year-old Glenn Johnson of Miami is making about $14,000 a year - or $7.93 an hour - working at Burger King and Walmart. Johnson is a single parent who toils day and night to provide for his family. He gets home at 1 or 2 a.m., but despite his hard work, he depends on food stamps. Johnson described his daily routine to the Huffington Post as “pure hell.” Unfortunately, this is a reality for more than 45 million Americans, roughly 15 percent of the American population,

No one denies living on less than $2/day as a single person is a struggle. Add to that the responsibility of children and potentially, extended family. This is the story of all too many people in the bottom 10% (and more) in the United States. Because such individuals receive the short-end of the stick, they feel compelled to trade in their SNAP benefits for cash, which are not that beneficial, regardless, because of the 2:1 payoff. In this novel, all of the individuals are portrayed as those who experience an unfair struggle which continues to perpetuate their emotional and financial misery. Don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with their plight, but I do know of, and have seen, in previous employment, many individuals who have capitalized on

It is an undeniable fact there exists a growing poverty epidemic within American society that needs to be addressed. According to a 2012 report by the Cato Institute the United States government spends nearly one-trillion dollars every year to combat severe financial need through a total of 126 separate welfare programs. While this value by itself seems significantly large, perhaps to an even excessive extent, in reality it had little effect on the American poverty level, never al allowing it to drop below 10.5%. Even with these massive government expenditures aimed at elevating quality of life, for many households an escape from their low-income bracket is still vastly unattainable. Current statistics show that more than 40% of individuals born into the bottom quintile will remain there, failing to escape into a life of financial stability. Despite immense funding, in its existing state of organization, the system of aid currently offered by the American government to lower income household fails to effectively alleviate the living conditions of the impoverished due to its negligence towards payday loans and the other intangible costs of poverty, its temporary and ineffective solutions to fight hunger, and most significantly, its insufficient reliance on an unreliable and inconsistent enforcement from state jurisdictions.

Based on the poverty threshold, or the smallest annual salary required to live as determined by the government, more than forty million people in America live in poverty (“UC Davis Center for Poverty Research”). That’s forty million people who make less money than the bare minimum required to support themselves or their family. Of those forty million, nineteen and a half million make less than fifty percent of the bare minimum they need to support themselves (“UC Davis Center for Poverty Research”). The only reason many of these people or families can support a stable life is thanks to many government welfare programs. Worst yet is

According to Peter Edelman of The American Prospect, the issues that America faces in the war on poverty are worse than we think, but we can overcome them. Edelman believes that there two core problems surrounding poverty in the United States: a high volume of low-wage employment and a concern for those who have no work opportunities available to them at all. Low-wage work surrounding those who are currently struggling to survive in America often have incomes that may even fall up to two times below the national poverty line. Edelman reports this figure represents those who bring home around $36,000 annually for a family of three; and in 2012 impacted a total of 103 million Americans, or one-third of the population. Those living in extreme

In a short fiction essay, “I Stand Here Ironing”, by Tillie Olsen, she wills the narrator, a young single mother that worked jobs that barely paid her minimum wage, to say “We were poor and could not afford her the soil of easy growth” (230). That is the familiar life story of many single mothers, or in some cases both parents, that cannot afford to give their children what they need. Children suffer- most families that rely on minimum wage cannot assure their children new clothing, shoes, and most importantly, a healthy diet to help them grow adequately.

Edin and Shaefer are professors of human science and open approach, separately, at Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan. Together they have many years of experience contemplating the reasons for extraordinary destitution in America and the viability of different proposed and executed arrangements. Their paper named “$2.00 a Day” started with perceptions of, Kathryn Edin, who by 2010 had put in over twenty years peddling poor groups everywhere throughout the nation. Back in the field to think about the profoundly poor, she started to experience something notably unique in relation to anything she had seen some time recently: families with no unmistakable methods for money wage from any source. Some had SNAP (sustenance stamps), a little gathering had a lodging sponsorship, and most had a family unit part on government-subsidized medical coverage. In any case, as they state: "[W]hat was so strikingly not the same as 10 years and a half prior was that there was essentially no money coming into these homes. These families didn't simply have too