Critical Analysis Of Nickel And Dimed

In Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, I am still a little puzzled as to what the author’s purpose was with her experiment to briefly “live like the working poor in America.” She states she was concerned about the Welfare to Work program enacted 3 years prior and her “objective” experiment will allow her to make a conclusion on the effectiveness of the program. It appeared to me that she went into the experiment with a bias that the program will not work and it is an unreasonable, unrealistic, and unfair program. This is shown by her immediate statement, “The humanitarian rationale for welfare reform-as opposed to the more punitive and stingy impulses that may have motivated it …”. She then continues by using just the statistics

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 to learn for herself. Her project begins in Florida where she worked as a waitress. Her goal throughout the entire project was to manage enough money to pay a second month of rent. Ehrenreich fails at her first job . Ehrenreich then explores Maine where she begins living in a motel. Ehrenreich gets hired as a housekeeper at a nursing home and a maid . By the end of her time in Maine, Ehrenreich exposes who she really is. Ehrenreich then explores her last state, Minnesota. Ehrenreich finds a job as a retail worker and begins doing fine but later begins hating her job. It is to complicated looking at Ehrenreich's success or failure of the whole project because one can not say what one feels about the whole book because it is to long especially because ones paper to write is to short. Criteria is important because it brings satisfaction and it helps create a final decision. Did Ehrenreich show great effort during her project and were her experiences realistic? Although Ehrenreich slightly failed at experiencing

“Nickel and Dimed” is a story about journalist Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join the number of Americans who had work full time for poverty-level wages. She was inspired by her curiosity about how people living on low poverty wages survived in this country and also by the welfare reform act, which promised that having a job could help lead to a better life. But Ehrenreich wondered about how anyone could truly survive, let alone prosper, on $6 or $7 an hour. In order to find out, Ehrenreich left her home and moved to states like Florida, Maine and Minnesota. She settled for the cheapest homes she could possibly find, such as lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. She also accepted whatever jobs she was offered, working jobs like being a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, waitress, Wal-Mart sales clerk and a nursing-home aide. Before doing her experiment Ehrenreich described the low wage jobs as being unskillful, however she quickly discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," and that even the lowliest jobs required exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is simply not enough; you will need at least two. By publishing the her research

Throughout the book I learned that trying to live off minimum wage with average life is nearly impossible. It is impossible because the people work all day, they have no health care and they typing scavenge the food that is cheap. Listening sad I feel like life and the economy is unbalanced. ? I've learned that the author is very biased and to me it seems odd that she would change places with someone that makes a low minimum wage when she makes all the money that she needs to survive. So what would happen if you put a child in the mix with trying to live off minimum wage? Some things that I'm going to include in my research paper is the statistics that she states at the bottom of the pages. An example would be the quote “So begins my career at the Hearthside, where for two weeks I work from 2:00 till 10:00 p.m. for $2.43 an hour plus tips” The quote shows that Barbra cannot live off $2.43.Another is “…forced to live off the contents of his car and whatever food items he can scrummage

In the book Nickel and Dimed written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is about a journalist who was assigned to write an article about the minimum wage life. She believed that in order to do this task she needs to actually experience it in her own point of view. She decided to do an experiment as to live a life with a minimum wage. I believe that the message that she was sending is that it is very difficult to survive in such a minimum wage. No one should be in that state where you have to worry about eating the next day or being able to pay the upcoming bills, not having a permanent shelter. Throughout the book she noted down the peoples situation about how they have to share the place in order for them to be able to pay the rent. To always having

In Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by In America" we read about a middle aged journalist undertaking a social experiment of the greatest magnitude. The journalist is Ehrenreich herself and the experiment was to find out how a woman, recently removed from welfare, due to policy reform, would make it on a six or seven dollar an hour wage. The experiment itself started out as just a question in the middle of lunch with one of Ehrenreich's editors, it soon turned into a job assignment. Before starting the experiment, Ehrenreich laid out some ground rules for her to follow during the duration of the assignment. First she could never use

Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Enrenreich was written in 2001 a book that displays the struggles of individual’s living in poverty. This book illustrates the barriers of the average American living off of minimum wage to supply the needs of getting to work, providing shelter and having food to eat. Enrenreich takes on the opportunity to show how she provided ways to come up with transportation, shelter, and food. She set up a regulation for herself during this experiment by not dipping into her money account unless necessary. She also found a reasonable cheap, safe house and a decent job. The reason Enrenreich states for doing this project was to determine if she, “could match income to expenses, as the truly poor

Struggling as a lower class worker, Barbara Ehrenreich found a new meaning to serving people as she writes about her experience working as a waitress in her piece, "Nickel and Dimed". Starting a new life in an unfamiliar setting was the least of her worries as she endeavors to find a way to support her newly independent life.

Throughout the novel Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author documents her journey working on minimum wage and trying to live off of the low wages. She found that living on minimum wage is a challenging task that requires sacrifice, dedication, hard work, and motivation to live. Ehrenreich found that the life of a minimum wage worker is full of injustice and helps bring to light the treatment and conditions for these people. She initially discovered that minimum wage does not support a comfortable life, including adequate housing, medical care, and food. She learned that these jobs are often physically demanding and require toughness to work them for long periods of time. Lastly, she found that the application process is intrusive and more in depth than necessary, she was subject to multiple drug tests and was treated poorly. Ehrenreich believed that these were significant problem and she likely hoped her book could shed light on the true life and

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Is about a woman, a journalist who goes undercover to witness the Welfare Program the government provides for the poor and people in need. Ehrenreich is white and middle class. She claims that her experience would have been radically different had she been a person of color or a single parent. Ehrenreich had not much to worry about other than finding a job and a somewhat comfortable living space. If she had not been white , her experience would have been drastically different in my opinion. With little money, during this time period things were still not too expensive but not too affordable for some people.

Can someone really live and prosper in American receiving minimal income? Can someone create a good lifestyle for themselves on just six to seven dollars an hour? In Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover to find out if it is indeed possible. Giving herself only $1,000 she leaves the lifestyle that she has come accustomed too and goes to join all the people living the low class way of life.

The main idea of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich demonstrates the complications and the way on how minimum wage workers survived during 1996 in Florida, Maine, and in Minnesota when the welfare reform had an impact on minimum wage. Her goal was to experience how to settle for rent, food, and bills while working in minimum salary. The idea of this project came in mind when she discussed with Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper’s, about future articles in magazines and then asked “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled? How, in particular, we wondered, were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to

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.

These families have struggled with poverty, domestic violence, drugs, and unemployment. One of those families was J.D. Vance’s family. Vance grew up in the “Rust Belt” of Ohio, into a struggling, poor, abusive family. Vance escaped his hardships by enrolling into the Military and going to school. However, other people weren’t as lucky as he was to get out, other families were still stuck in “Hillbilly” Middletown. Things were going good for these families until the 1970s and 1980s came along. This is when things took a toll, industrial jobs were cut, causing a down-ward spiral for everyone in Ohio. This is when the alcoholism, drug use, and domestic violence became a norm. For about a century, the region seemed to be on a upward spiral. Middletown’s streets today are full of “shuttered storefronts and drug dealers, (Rothman,New Yorker).”

In the book “Men We Reaped” Jesmyn explained about her hometown of DeLisle, on Mississippi 's Gulf Coast. She explained that it was a place ravaged by poverty, drugs and routine violence. Ward was always still brought back to her hometown even though she had the opportunity to leave. With the poverty that happens in the book and my neighborhood are very similar. I am from Queens, New York City where the dope dealers don’t care if they get caught or not. In the book she explained that “I see history, I see racism, I see economic disempowerment, I see all of these things, you know, that come together, or that came together, sort of in this perfect storm here in southern Mississippi, and I feel like that is what is bearing down on our lives." This quote explained that nobody is getting the help that they need, and that there needs to be a solution to this problem. Not only was it just a problem in the book but it’s also a problem here in New York and all over. The negatives about poverty are Malnutrition, and Education. Malnutrition is one of