Analysis Of David K. Shipler's ' The Working Poor '

In America, millions of people are affected by poverty. High-class members of America and companies take advantage of these lower class individuals. Lower class individuals who are able to find a job usually work for less than minimum wage and experience poor working conditions. These lower class workers do not deserve the lifestyle they must deal with. Low class individuals not only have to struggle with finding employment but also have to worry about the U.S. government mistreating them. Whether someone is a low class immigrant or U.S. born citizen, it is evident people in America treat their lower class citizens poorly.

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.

People are still living on $2 a day here in the United States. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, how is it possible for people to live with this little amount of money? I know that I cannot. In $2.00 a Day, Jennifer Hernandez, a single mother with two kids, is a person who lives on $2 a day as she tries to survive and support herself and her kids in the collapsing economy. The minimum wage job for cleaning houses reinforces the cycle of poverty that Jennifer and her kids live in. This cycle of poverty reveals that there needs to be major changes to the economical infrastructure of the United States since the poor cannot get themselves out of poverty even though they actively look for work or have a job.

Living or subsistence wage is amount of income needed to maintain basic standard of living. Theoretically, this wage should bring people out of poverty if implemented. The real take home wage for most workers are far below this ‘utopic’ living wage. Absence of living wage for most workers has been recognized as a contributing factor to the difficult task of upward social mobility with resultant diminishing equality of opportunity and relative poverty for most workers in this country today. The concept of working poor is born out of this dystopic social stratification. The threat this and other social determinant factors posed to the realization of the lofty goal of ‘American Dream’ are the subject of this paper.

The book “The Other America”, written by Michael Harrington, describes poverty in America in the 1950s and 1960s, when America became one of the most affluent and advanced nations in the world. The book was written in 1962, and Harrington states that there were about 50,000,000 (about 25% of the total population) poor in America at that time. The author did extensive research with respect to the family income levels to derive the poverty numbers, and used his own observations and experiences to write this book. This book addresses the reasons for poverty, the nature of poverty, the culture of poverty, the blindness of Middle Class America with respect to poverty, and the responsibility of all Americans in addressing the issue of poverty in America.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America was the first book of its type that I’ve ever read, a real life analysis of what its like to “live in poverty,” working minimum wage jobs trying to make ends meet day in and day out. It was an intriguing story of how a woman with plenty went on to document how she lived without and I found that Ehrenreich’s commentary throughout the book offered a refreshing perspective to the usual conversation that surrounds poverty; she never thought that she was better or better off than those she met working low-paying jobs, and she was always conscious of how race intersected with class throughout her so-called field experiment.

A question one might ask themselves; why would two authors write a book on the working poor? This topic is of high importance but people in the United States do not seem to understand. The census taken in 2012 tells us 46.5 million people in the United States are living in poverty and 20.4 million people are living in deep poverty which is where income is 50% lower than the poverty line. 80% of humanity living in the United States lives on $10 a day; that is over half of the people living in poverty, and they are hardly being able to provide for themselves. Working class is the majority in the United States which makes this topic very important. When 80% of the U.S. population is considered the working poor, and they live below the poverty

It is expensive to be poor in America. With unemployment being persistently high, this is good news for those in the poverty business who make money off of the misery of the poor. The working poor have to contend with payday loans, rent to own schemes, sub-prime lenders, exorbitant credit cards and a diabolically clever ideas that entrepreneurs have though of to get rich off those with thin wallets. The poor are stuck because they do not have the means to go elsewhere (" Place matters,," 2008).

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich tells a powerful and gritty story of daily survival. Her tale transcends the gap that exists between rich and poor and relays a powerful accounting of the dark corners that lie somewhere beyond the popular portrayal of American prosperity. Throughout this book the reader will be intimately introduced to the world of the “working poor”, a place unfamiliar to the vast majority of affluent and middle-class Americans. What makes this world particularly real is the fact that we have all come across the hard-working hotel maid, store associate, or restaurant waitress but we hardly ever think of what their actual lives are like? We regularly dismiss these people as

Being at the bottom in the United States means to be the poorest and to have the lowest socioeconomic status, these people usually work minimum wage jobs or don’t work at all and live off of welfare. The culture of poverty thesis states that ‘Poverty is caused by shortcomings in the poor themselves (Oscar Lewis, Macionis, J. 2004)’. Many people feel this way, but some blame society, ‘Poverty is caused by society’s unequal distribution of wealth and lack of good jobs (William Julius William, Macionis, J. 2004). Most people in US are poor or have a very small income which sides more with society being the blame for all these people struggling to support themselves in today’s economy (Macionis, J. 2004, p. 277). The functional model in sociology focuses on the social structures of low-wages (Merton, as cited by Carnochan, S. 2013) which is what most people in poverty are stuck living off of due to lack of education and opportunity. Some people argue that to maintain low prices for goods and services poverty and low-wage work is important and needed for our economy (Gans, as cited by Carnochan, S. 2013). Some people may believe this is true, usually those in a better social position, but some people have an opposing opinion to the low pay of some workers. The conflict model explains this inequality of wages in the work world, it also brings to attention how people with and without power experience inequality. For example, CEO’s with lots of

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 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.

In the U.S., the primary source of income comes from jobs. However, people are unable to find jobs because businesses are outsourcing unskilled labor to developing countries since workers there are willing to be paid less than the average American worker. This creates problems for people who are trying to look for jobs because many lack the skills to function in a job that requires skill and will remain jobless until they find unskilled labor jobs. Since the Recession, working class families who had lost their jobs are struggling to survive due to the little job availability (Heritage Foundation, 2011). Because the majority of working class families are suffering from prolonged

The working poor are those people that work the hardest for their dollar, work the hardest to get their paychecks, work the hardest to survive. Most of the working poor live paycheck to paycheck and like the saying goes, “robbing from Peter to pay Paul.” There is a way out of poverty, and there is a way for these struggling individuals to escape the perils of their life in poverty. It is not an easy road out, but it is possible. It is important for those that are born into this lifestyle to know that this is not a destination; there is hope that they will live a so called “better” life.

Imagine yourself in a situation where you are not only struggling financially but struggling just to get to work. This defines the working poor. Their financial situations prevent them from being able to live their life comfortably. They face problems that we all may experience from time to time, but the experience for them is much more harsh. Solutions have been offered to them, but some have abused that help and it has been taken away from them.