No Shame In My Game Analysis

“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.

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.

Author Bryan Stevenson (2014) writes, “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned”(p.18). According to the non-profit, Feeding America (2016), in 2015, 43.1 million, or 13.5%, of people in the United States were impoverished. Poverty is a vicious cycle, trapping people and families for generations. The inability to escape poverty is due in part to difficult class mobility in the U.S. but also because certain factors reinforce the idea and state of poverty. Bryan Stevenson’s bestseller Just Mercy, Lindsey Cook’s article “U.S. Education: Still Separate and Unequal”, Michelle Alexander’s excerpt “The Lockdown”, and Sarah Smarsh’s “Poor Teeth” all explore the idea of poverty and the systems that sustain it. While all four readings focus on poverty differently and explore it using different techniques, they all share similar big picture ideas about how poverty is fortified through systematic, societal, and psychological efforts.

In David K. Shipler’s book, The Working Poor Invisible in America the reader is provided a peek into the personal stories of the inner lives of eight families struggling inside the vicious cycle of poverty. Shipler’s method of interviews, narratives of personal stories and observation represents an innovative study investigating the working poor in an attempt to understand “how people in real communities devise collective responses to their problems (Segal, 2010).”

In the article, “What’s So Bad about Being Poor” by Charles Murray, Murray states that “One of the great barriers to a discussion of poverty and social policy in the 1980s is that so few people who talk about poverty have ever been poor”. He discusses how, contrary to present day, in America up until the 1950s those in positions of influence and power included a sizable amount of people who had been raised “dirt-poor”. Murray states that, because of this, many Americans with their lack of exposure to such people, they develop a skewed perspective of what poverty is. On account of this, Murray challenges the reader with several thought experiments which he uses to help the reader come to certain conclusions that convey his message.

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

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.

According to the U.S Bureau of Labor and Statistics, in the United States, it is recorded that roughly 5.4 million women are classified as working poor. Which shows they are considered higher than men, 5.0 million (BLS Reports). Among the large portion of Americans considered the “working poor”, this article breaks down not only into gender but race. It also incuded that those of Hispanic or African American race were more than two times more likely to be considered “working poor”, compared to other races considering the white and Asian populations. In 2013, the “working poor” rates for the African Americans and Hispanics were roughly 13.3, and 12.8 percent (BLS Reports). Also

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.

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

Author Harrell R. Rodgers, Jr. uses his article, “Why Are People Poor in America?,” to discuss the cultural/behavioral and structural/economic theories of why poverty exists as a social problem. First, Rodgers reviews the conservative theories, also known as the cultural/behavioral theories, of poverty. These views mostly consist of blaming the existence of poverty on the culture of laziness that has been growing in the poor population due to the availability of welfare. Many of the conservative authors that are mentioned in this article agree that welfare automatically makes the poor think that they are not personally capable of getting back on their feet by themselves; therefore, the poor

On Thursday, April 14, 2016, I attended the final dress rehearsal for Spring Awakening in

The Working Poor: Invisible in America is a story that takes personal stories and accounts of people lives to describe the injustices that people face every day. Poverty is damaging to both the economy and the people who face it. Many times social policies are created to assist the people who are working but still struggle to get basic needs like food, utilities, gas, and medical. Poverty is a perpetuating cycle that is intended to keep the poor oppressed and discriminated against. Respectfully, this critique will address the social problems that are identified in the book, the major social welfare policy issues, the social values and beliefs that are critical and the implications for future social welfare policy and social work practice.

When my English teacher assigned the class to complete ten hours of community service, I had mixed emotions and did not know what to expect, for it would be my very first time volunteering. Curious and anxious, once I arrived home, I immediately searched for different places to volunteer. There were a variety of locations to work at, like the local library, elementary schools, swimming centers, but in the end I decided on a senior center, called Glendale Hills Adult Day Care Health Center. My great-grandma, who attends that day care, always tries to persuade me to come with her, saying that I would have a grand time and would learn new things; however, I lie and tell her I am busy every time. I do not want to spend my entire day hearing old people complain about

The pinpoint cause of poverty is challenging to find. People who live well off and are above the poverty line may be quick to assume that laziness, addiction, and the typical stereotypes are the causes of poverty. Barbara Ehrenreich, a well known writer on social issues, brings attention to the stereotypical ideology at her time, that “poverty was caused, not by low wages or a lack of jobs, but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles” (17). Ehrenreich is emphasizing the fact that statements like the one listed, often influence readers to paint inaccurate mental pictures of poverty that continue to shine light on the ideology of stereotypes being the pinpoint cause to poverty. However, there are many other causes that are often overshadowed, leaving some individuals to believe that poverty was wrongfully placed upon them. Examples would include: high rates of unemployment, low paying jobs, race, and health complications. Which are all out of one’s ability to control. There is no control over a lack of jobs and high rates of unemployment, nor the amount of inadequate wages the working poor receive. Greg Kaufmann, an advisor for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Half in Ten campaign, complicates matters further when he writes, “Jobs in the U.S. [were] paying less than $34,000 a year: 50 percent. Jobs in the U.S. [were] paying below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually: 25 percent” (33). Acknowledging Kaufmann’s fact, the amount received for a family of four is fairly close to the yearly salary of a high school graduate, which means, receiving that kind of pay for one man may seem challenging, now imagine caring for the needs of four individuals. To make matters worse, certain families receive that amount of money and carry the burden of paying for