Barbara Ehrenreich 's Nickel And Dimed

The book Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting by in America, written by Barbara Ehrenreich is a book that relates the experience of how she survived living on poverty-level wages in America as a waitress, maid and a Wal-mart sales associate. Barbara left her comfortable surroundings as a journalist with a Ph.D in biology to work various "unskilled" and "under compensated" jobs in order to achieve, "the old-fashioned kind of journalism". In regards to leaving her comfortable lifestyles for a few months traveling through Florida to Maine and Minnesota, she discovered that people who are paid six to seven dollars an hour did not generate enough income for those who did not want to live

The situation Ehrenreich is describing is the reality of millions of Americans; they work multiple minimum wage jobs, and are paid “so meagerly that workers can’t save enough to move on.” In addition, Ehrenreich recalls the actions of the U.S. government in regards to assisting these Americans. The article opens with the contribution of President Lyndon B. Johnson on the “War on Poverty”, then the “attack on welfare” in the 90s, concluding with The Great Recession. While writing Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich abandoned her comfortable life to live the life of a low-income American; she worked multiple entry level jobs including Wal-Mart, a maid service, and as a nursing home aide. Through these actions, Ehrenreich establishes her ethos. Because she’s lived the lifestyle she’s describing, she has the authority to speak on the topic. Ehrenreich concludes with her proposal to help the

By learning about the poverty in not only the city of Buffalo, but also the rest of the country, it inspires me to step up and be engaged in my community even more. We have learned so much about how things like the education you receive and what neighborhood you grow up in can heavily affect your future. In one of the readings from week 4, when the author is discussing poverty, he says, “What I see is the failure of society. I see a society that let that happen, that is not doing what it should. And it’s very sad” (Pilkington 25).

In the book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich leaves behind her lifestyle as a journalist for one of a low-wage worker. As we follow Ehrenreich on her journey, we are exposed to the struggles the working poor have to face as Ehrenreich attempts to survive on a minimum wage pay. In hopes of changing the way readers perceive its working poor, Ehrenreich uses rhetorical strategies conveyed throughout the book, in particular, ethos, logos, and pathos.

Linda Tirado, author of Hand to Mouth Living in Bootstrap America, tells her story of what it’s like to be working poor in America, as well as what poverty is truly like on many levels. With a thought-provoking voice, Tirado discusses her journey from lower class, to sometimes middle class, to poor, and everything in between. Throughout the read, Tirado goes on to reveal why poor people make the decisions they do in a very powerful way.

In Barbara Ehrenreich's bold and honest book she tackles the issue of poverty in America head on, by becoming a low wage worker herself. Ehrenreich delves into the often unheard of issues relating to poverty and low wage work, providing her readers with a new perspective on America's working poor and manages to give her audience a stark emotional, yet logical and factual, look into the working class' poverty epidemic. She uses her own anecdotal evidence and supports it with statistics and facts, appeals to ethos by challenging the ethics of corporate America and it costs, finally she hits an emotional chord with readers by reminding them of what low wage workers must endure so that we can live in our America.

Macklemore’s latest single, “Kevin” voices the struggle lower class Americans go through with overusing prescription medication. Drug use and abuse has become a widespread issue within the United States. One of its most troubling aspects being the abuse of pharmaceutical and prescription drugs, painkillers raising the most concern. Drugs such as Oxycontin, Ambien, and Xanax are being prescribed by doctors and given to the public and then being misused, causing more harm than good. ADD SOURCE THAT EXPLAINS THE MANIFESTATION OF THIS. Barbara Ehrenreich, an American author and sociologist explores this very problem in her book, Nickel and Dimed. When talking about a worker’s use of medication, Ehrenreich claims that, “Unfortunately, the commercial tells us, we workers can exert the same kind of authority over our painkillers that our bosses exert over us. If Tylenol doesn’t want to work for more than four hours, you just fire its ass and switch to Aleve”(25). In other words, Ehrenreich is stating how the media is pushing drugs onto the working class and through the use of personification she illustrates how workers identify themselves with the medications they are taking. Employees will opt for the most efficient medication in order to be efficient

In the essay by Barbara Ehrenreich, titled Nickel and Dimed written in 2001. This article talks about how Barbara struggled through her low-income life at the time in Florida. Due to high rent and low wage, her experience shows us that the most middle-class Americans have a huge financial problem. Now, she wants to prove why economic crisis still exist in some parts of America.

Ethos, pathos, and logos are all devices that Barbara Ehrenreich effectively uses throughout her novel Nickel and Dimed to prove that America needs to address the commonly overlooked issue of poverty within every community. It is important that she uses all three devices because they help support her argument by increasing her credibility, connecting to the readers’ emotions, and appealing to their sense of logic. The combination of these devices puts a sense of urgency on the problem Ehrenreich is addressing and therefore creates an effective argument.

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

The purpose of Barbara Ehrenreich 's novel was to present empirical and philosophical arguments against social policies associated with poverty and the ideologies surrounding it. Ehrenreich had an English degree and was used to doing research and writing about the experiences surrounding her findings. However, with her research surrounding Nickel and Dimed she took a more empirical approach by living the experiences of her research to discover the undercover truths surrounding minimum wage jobs. Ehrenreich knew it would be difficult to transition from her ivory tower

In the book Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, who is a famous journalist and writer. She explores how low-wage workers survive in America by going undercover. Ehrenreich notes that her experiment will take place in three different states: Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. In these three sates she works as a maid, waitress, and in retail. Ehrenreich’s goal at the end of each month was to have enough money for the next months’ rent.

Ehrenreich wrote Nickel and Dimed to share her experience of living as a low-wage worker. In order for Ehrenreich to experience being a low-wage worker she traveled around the country taking on different jobs. A low-wage job to me is a job that doesn’t provide you enough money to live off of. Although Ehrenreich’s limit of never being homeless is unfair, generally her rules and limits are fair.

This program explores the disturbing realities that many people in low-salaries jobs face every day--such as having to decide whether to pay the rent, buy groceries, or see a doctor. they will learn how standards of living are often measured, how suburban areas have fostered a particular type of economic hardship, and how care to work programs have, at times, led to more resistant poverty. Rice, S. E., Graff, C., and Pascual, C. (2010).  Confronting poverty : weak states and U.S. national security.

The problem of persistent poverty is a complex one that includes communities and individuals who, through no fault of their own, find themselves unable to make ends meet in this world. Large numbers of the nation 's citizens live at or below the poverty threshold, which means each month is a struggle to pay the bills and provide the basics, including food, clothing, and shelter, not to mention access to health care and simple comforts. Unfortunately, today it seems the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The gap between the economically secure and the poor is becoming so large and will only increase without an attempt for solutions. The hardships of living in poverty and the ways that those in poverty find solutions to their daily problems are followed through two different, yet similar texts. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s, “Nickel and Dimed”, she explores what it is truly like to live as a poverty stricken individual in America. Contrastively, in Sudhir Venkatesh’s, “Gang Leader for a Day”, he finds himself in the middle of a community that has been abandoned by state.