Kyrsten Sinema Analysis

More specifically, one story talks about Shelly Comer a divorced 43 year old mother of three who also take care of her oldest child’s friend, Michelle. Shelly has worked her whole life doing a variety of jobs. She recently became a registered nurse and now works night shifts and makes an annual income of $70,377. Regardless of these things, she is currently going into debt so that Michelle can go to college. This article not only explains the “many average Americans that are struggling from rising costs” but also how it’s getting harder for American families to have any money for themselves.

Frontline’s special of Two American Families contrasts families trying to secure a foothold in the middle class America during a time of struggle in the city of Milwaukee. Indeed, the special is about the financial strain on the middle class of America, but what is clear is the difference a mindset and communication can make for a family during a challenge. If a family chooses to stay positive, stick together and communicate well, their chances of making it through is much stronger than those who become negative and fail to clearly communicate their goals. For example, Tony Newman lost his job as his employer downsized. This brought incredible financial strain upon his family as he was unable to find new employment. Therefore, his wife got a job to provide for the family. What was

America is often referenced with the idea of the “American Dream” and the “Land of Opportunity.” For centuries, people have flocked to America in hopes of a better life and greater opportunity. However, if they are searching for equal opportunity, America is not the country that they will find it in. Success in the United States is limited to the opportunities available to the individual, and without equal distribution of opportunity, financial success is not reachable to those in the lower classes of American society. Notable educators and authors such as Gregory Mantsios and Diana Kendall have brought the problems of American society to attention, claiming that the rich are getting richer and the poor continue to remain poor. In his essay, “Class in America – 2009,” Mantsios discusses the myths that revolve around class in America, and then refutes these myths by describing the realities of the society Americans live in. Similarly, in her essay, “Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption,” Kendall writes about the realities of the classes in America while advocating for a change in the way the media portrays the class issues. The United States was founded on the belief of equal opportunity for all individuals, and many still believe that equal opportunity still holds true today. Despite the way media masks the class issues, empirical evidence and research show that equal opportunity does not exist in America due to

Like the previous example of our class activity, you can gather some information about the family to personally consider whether you think the people portrayed deserve help. In the opening of the book, Andrea Campbell gives us information about the couple’s job status, income, and family size, which allows the reader to make a first opinion on the family’s deservedness. Once this introduction is made, the reader can see the twists and turns that can lead a family into needing government help, which is often the part of the story that gets lost – as most assume those in poverty are there because of their own ambition or actions. The wife gets in an accident, which forces the couple to take an insurance plan from the California government that is designed to keep them in poverty by taking away their income after a set cap is reached (Campbell 2014). The book continues to take the reader through the experience of trying to survive on social insurance and means-tested programs (those where recipients must hold a job or other status to maintain benefits), and ends with three Chapters discussing the difficulties that means-tested programs create for those in poverty. By forcing the reader to, in some way, experience a very average story about surviving in poverty, the book forces the reader

“Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow” (Ehrenreich, 2001, pg. 199). Barbara Ehrenreich wrote this in her captivating book Nickel and Dimed, where she embarked on a journey that revalued the truth behind life in low-wage America. Growing up I was led to believe that nothing worth having comes easy. As long as I worked hard and gave everything 100% I was guaranteed success, in essence hard work was the key to success. Ehrenreich revels the sad reality for many Americans where hard work, the type you never thought possible that leads to exhaustion, does not guarantee success. Ehrenreich had very unique objectives for writing this novel and she was able to reveal the impacts of social policy then and now.

Together, they made around $83,000 and had around $90,000 in assets which placed them solidly in the middle class. Twelve years later, Allison and David experienced setbacks but increased their income to about $125,000. Their financial assets quadrupled to a whopping $368,000 and saved up thousands of dollars for retirement. However, with the economy downsizing on the heels of the Great Recession and uneven job recovery heavily tilted toward low-wage jobs, David joined millions of other Americans in unemployment. Having spent half a year unemployed, David returned to work working at a significantly lower wage. Over the course of 12 years, David witnessed how work became less stable and more contingent for many Americans. The working experience illustrates a larger transformation in America’s employment landscape, away from middle-class jobs and jobs with significant benefits toward low-paying jobs with few benefits, accelerated by the Great Recession.

Cardenas & Kerby (2012) reveal, “Our country is rapidly changing. As we approach the year 2050, our nation will be increasingly more diverse, and Latinos will be one of the forces driving this demographic change. According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau population estimate, there are roughly 50.5 million Hispanics representing about 16 percent of the U.S. population. By 2050, when demographers tell us that there will be no racial or ethnic majority among the general population of the United States, it is projected that the Latino population will double to 30 percent. Consequently, the role of Latinos in shaping our country’s political and economic climate is becoming more significant (Para. 1).This essay will explain some of the social class experiences of Hispanic Americans including economic struggles, education attainment, and healthcare insurance.

This book is great for clients because it provides the fundamentals of the economic classes in America. Leondar-Wright starts off by defining who falls into which class and the unequal distribution in our country. She states, “two-thirds of Americans are working-class, low-income, or low-middle-class” which is an unsettling fact (Leondar-Wright, p. 2). Although most people believe that many Americans identify themselves as “middle-class,” Leondar-Wright reveals that this is false and that working-class is a more appropriate term. Working-class, as Leondar-Wright defines it, is someone who has little education, one non-luxury house, and has a job consisting of physical labor (p. 1). As you can see this applies to many more people than originally thought.

America’s lower class is omnipresent. Waiters, taxi drivers, maids, and cooks are all examples of people who likely make minimum wage or close to it. Much like with the untouchables of Hinduism, people deal with these workers daily and often do not give a second thought at how their lifestyles are. This pervasive disregard for the lower class has led to many people not knowing the seemingly insurmountable difficulties many members of the lower class face daily. Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America seeks to expose the harsh realities of life for these people. She notes that some of coworkers are homeless and that others must support multiple people with an income of less than ten dollars an hour. Repeatedly, she includes details that highlight the desperately destitute conditions of her coworkers. At its core, Nickel and Dimed is a book whose author wrote to edify people of the reprehensible conditions of the lower class in the United States and the injustices of the American system.

While readers may look at the statistics and reasonings, some will immediately entrust the author to provide them with accurate and meaningful information such that they are prepared to prevent the worsening of poverty in America. Reeves recognizes that the Brookings website audience is predominantly a large group of liberal democrats. Their passion to assist those in the lower middle class makes the author 's argument compelling and lends credence to Reeves 's position of separation of the classes. Our author comments, "Efforts to increase redistribution, or loosen licensing laws, or free up housing markets, or reform school admissions can all run into the solid wall of rational, self-interested upper middle-class resistance." The idea that the upper middle class can somehow impact the wellbeing of those less affluent can be very intimidating for many. The fear of separation amongst the classes may move his readers to action, and quite possibly stop the widening between the classes.

Kenia Calderon has been an active leader since 2013, when she became vocal about her lack of legal status to improve the lives of the undocumented youth in Des Moines. Over the last four years, she has met undocumented high schoolers to motivate and guide them as they navigate the higher education system. Her fight for civil rights include fighting for low income families to have access financial institutions, access to higher education, and standing with street vendors as they fought for their rights at the city level. Kenia has lobbied for different causes that affect the most vulnerable in our city. She lobbied for credit unions to not be regulated like banks because these financial institutions have efforts around serving the unbanked

Furthermore, the equality of opportunities as one of the foundations of the American dream turned into evident inequality. “The lion’s share of economic growth in American over the past thirty years has gone to a small, wealthy minority, to such an extent that it’s unclear whether the typical family has benefited at all from technological progress and the rising productivity it brings” (Krugman 586). Income inequality has been steadily growing since 2008 when the global financial crisis erupted. Moreover, the gap in prosperity between the group of Americans with high income and all the others had never been such extreme as it is now. Thus, not everyone has the opportunity to become wealthy through hard work. The increase in socioeconomic inequalities,

The documentary film “Park Avenue: Money, Power, and the American Dream” directed by Alex Gibney is about the wealth gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. The documentary compares the access to opportunities of residents of Park Avenue both on the Upper East Side and in the South Bronx. The documentary includes interviews with a series of people: a doorman at 740 Park Avenue, journalist Jane Mayer, Yale University Professor Jacob Hacker, Berkeley Professor Paul Piff, and Republican advisor Bruce Bartlett. The documentary makes a compelling case that inequality exposes democracy and that the victims of inequality include not only those who find themselves in the rapidly expanding underclass, but the American dream itself.

This “middle-class nation” is struggling to support all those who live in its borders and the misconceptions about wealth are vastly overrated. Furthermore, the idea of wealth and stability is incorrect, and there is a very sharp contrast between the rich and poor in the country. As the richest twenty percent of American hold ninety percent of the total household of the total household wealth in the country, those at the bottom have managed very poorly and suffer to get through the days.

The era of volatility has created a shift from America being the middle-class society to simply rich or poor (Sachs, 2011). A gap this large has not been experienced since the 1920’s (Sachs). “The top 1% of households takes almost a quarter of all household income” but an economy this top heavy will not be able to succeed (Sachs, 2011, p. 30). The working classes are struggling with housing, wage, and employment issues. Rich individuals are ignoring these troubles, shipping their business operations out of the country, thus furthering the downward spiral of the economy (Sachs). To make matters worse, this has become in a large part a political issue, because the rich can influence candidates with funding, where the poor and working