Essay about Not Really The Working Poor in "Nickel and Dimed"

To begin with, Ehrenreich’s method of research does take a lot of commitment and it is a difficult simulation to have to experience, however, there is an entire section of research she can not obtain from this method of research. Ehrenreich can not get an accurate representation of her co-worker’s past struggles and their current situations away from work. In her novel, Ehrenreich quotes, “...but it would take a long time, probably months before I could hope to be accepted into this sorority,” (Ehrenreich 395). The poor working class, at Jerry’s at least, is a closed off society. The workers only trust people that are in similar situations as them and do not openly share their

Through several claims, Ehrenreich supports her argument of life being immensely difficult when trying to tranquilly live off of a minimum wage. One of the claims that Ehrenreich includes is that the wages are simply too low. (199). While on this journey Ehrenreich notices many things that most people who are getting paid more than the minimum seem to not acknowledge. In her evaluation she brings up how she has noticed, “In the first quarter of 2000, the poorest 10 percent of workers were earning only 91 percent of what they earned in the distant era of Watergate and disco music.” (203). This supports her claim because it is a perfect example of how the poorest have made the least progress compared to the wage levels of the 1970s, it makes the reader realize that in a change of about thirty years the wage has gone up so little yet the prices for everything else has risen, making it impossible for the lower class to stably keep up with their surrounding debts. Since Ehrenreich was getting paid minimum wage, when she had the opportunity to ask about it to her employer “Ted” in Maine, she did. She asked why he simply didn’t raise the wage up for his workers

Ehrenreich developed the objectives of this book in a very interesting way. Ironically she developed the idea for this project over a very elegant expensive lunch at a French country-style restaurant. Ehrenreich and her editor Lewis Laphan from Harpers had gone out to lunch to discuss future articles. Throughout lunch the topic of poverty came up. Questions like, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” (Ehrenreich, 2001 pg. 1) and how do unskilled workers survive on such low incomes, started to surface. She then thought “Someone ought to do the old-fashioned kind of journalism – you know, go out there and try

The most difficult problem Ehrenreich faces is lodging. Finding a place to stay is very costly and exhaustive. As Ehrenreich finds out, a lot of her coworkers live inside their cars or with roommates in very small quarters.

A hardship that Ehrenriech addresses is the fatigue involved in low wage jobs. There are many instances where Ehrenriech complains that she has to stand for over eight hours at work. “Now I have nine hours instead of eight, and although one of them is an unpaid dinner hour, I have a net half hour a day more on my feet”(163). At Wal-Mart, her shift changes from an eight-hour dayshift to a nine-hour night shift. Everyone wealthy or poor has to overcome many difficulties a t their respective work environments. For example, doctors have to be on call at all times, and occasionally have to run to the hospital to take care of an emergency in the middle of the night—everyone has to deal with hardships. Ehrenriech would refute this by saying that though everyone has to deal with hardships, those working at minimum wage a lot of times have trouble making ends meet. They have to deal with a lot of fatigue and stress. As a result of working all the time, minimum wage workers don’t have much time for themselves. They are always stressed, tired and overworked. As a result, they resort to

Before moving any further with potential weaknesses, the major and possibly only strength was Ehrenreich’s issue with rent, but this later hits a dead-end. Rent being a significant problem for a society that expects and claims that people are able to afford to live off of minimum wage should highlight a flaw in that assumption. Throughout this book, rent becomes a major issue for her but her continuous complaining with no action becomes ineffective. When placed with desperate measures, strategies are quickly summoned. If one has some family and/or friends, there will be an attempt to ask them to loan money. If the individual has formed relationships and associations with people who are also hanging on the poverty line, the idea of taking in a roommate or moving in with a roommate to split the rent will definitely be a consideration as well as considering any government assistance programs. Ehrenreich’s fictional character did not include any family nor friends and associations that she could split the rent with nor did she seek out any other ways to make ends meet. These subtleties can make it easier for readers to disregard the stress of paying ones rent, because Ehrenreich’s experience is simply not an accurate depiction; failing to demonstrate logical behavior of someone who is sincerely

Reluctant at first to be the one doing the research, Ehrenreich finally capitulates and begins life as a minimum wage worker in America. The main idea of her experiment was to spend one month in each place and make enough to pay the second month’s rent (p.5-6). She wonders if she will find some special techniques that the poor use to get by. She finds that there are no secret economies, people just do the best they can with what they have available.

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

Continuously, Ehrenreich concludes with disdain that living off of a minimum wage job without being homeless is difficult or impossible. At each of the states she travels to, she finds she must work two jobs in order to afford even the most basic rooms. She notes that her troubles are not unique. Persistently, she writes about her coworkers being homeless or in one instance, not even being able to afford proper food and instead eating only a bad of

Ehrenreich is a guinea pig in her own experiment of establishing a stable income with the help of a tight budget to get her to her goal, which is to build a financially stable life, as well as the help a minimum wage job. She performs this in three different locations; each having a lasting impact on her as she learns the difficulty of assimilating in a city with economic setbacks. Ehrenreich has her ups and downs in her experience, especially with money. After the ordeal, the author of the book learns about how much money is depended on and how it can change a person because she experienced it on a first-hand account. Documenting on her journey, Ehrenreich encountered people who were at their lowest and were still attempting to make the best out of it. She met immigrants and coworkers who shared stories of their low salaries and were still grateful for what they receive. This shows that it makes people more appreciated and humble for what they have because it could have been worse. Barbara Ehrenreich gained the talent of adapting to new locations, attempting to establish a secure economic foundation while having financial

Ehrenreich makes these observations with academic precision, interspersed with firm middle-class values, but these judgments were not made from an ivory tower, coldly calculated and formed with the disinterested tone of the scientist that she is. To the contrary, Ehrenreich attempted to immerse herself in the lives of female underclass minimum-wage earners and performed her research by taking work and attempting to live off of wages earned by working at truck stop diners cleaning companies. She lives in seedy motels and eats the waste of customers right along side those whom she is studying (2001). In this way she ideally positions herself to understand and report on the dehumanizing effects that

Throughout the book Ehrenreich’s co-workers all seem to struggle, such as the trouble with housing in Key West and healthcare in Maine. Having a place to live, eating properly, and healthcare seem to be the biggest cause of concern within the working class. Most of the jobs that she worked, the workers did not have healthcare packages or benefits. So it wasn’t uncommon for them to have trouble trying to manage their health and struggle to pay for medication, let alone a visit to the doctor. Without healthcare and a lack of proper diet (in Maine she had a ‘thirty minute’ lunch break but most of her co-workers barely ate anything close to a meal) it is not hard to see how the working class can easily be shot into poverty; seeing as most of the working class that she had encountered were just living above the poverty line. Reading about what she noticed and noted about her co-workers it isn’t hard to imagine how easy it would be to fall below the poverty

In the beginning she was reluctant and did not want to do it herself. She was going to have "some hungry neophyte journalist with time on her hands" do it instead. For the first sections of the book, the author is passive and does not care. Despite trying to educate the public of the strife of the minimum wage workers, she is not passionate about what she is trying to teach. However, as the novel continues she becomes more actively involved. With this involvement she quickly becomes exhausted. Referring back to this invalid out of date experiment, when Ehrenreich was too tired to continue she had the option of quitting, of going back to her normal life. The people she was trying to imitate do not have that luxury. They do not have the option of quitting and starting over when they feel tired. Or they do not like their job, or they are being mistreated in the workplace. Actual low wage people rely on the one or two jobs they have to live. Getting fired or quitting for them is like a death

Many of the decisions faced by Ehrenreich during her experience came into conflict with how she valued efficiency, fairness and democracy. Ehrenreich is first forced to sacrifice efficiency when she discovers there are no low-income dwellings near possible low-income jobs (13-14). She is forced to waste time on a 45-minute commute because of this situation. However, the inefficiency of her coworkers’ living conditions is even worse. Because they can’t afford to put a down payment on a place to live, they have to pay day by day at a hotel. In the long run this adds up to be more expensive. They also do not have the means to prepare bulk food, a strategy that would save money on meals (21). Bowles et al defines efficiency as applying the inputs

In episode two Barbara Ehrenreich does a slightly less adequate job of portraying the way in which the low wage workers live. In this episode Ms. Ehrenreich has some health problems and eventually schedules a doctor’s appointment with her real doctor and uses her insurance. For those living with low wage income this is not an option available to them. For this reason she has been less authentic with her research on how the low wage worker lives. Though she still conveys the problems of this life style to the readers. Ms. Ehrenreich describes how the employer at the maid’s service has them follow strict rules that do not allow them to actually clean the houses, just to create the illusion of a clean house. All they do is wipe away that which can be seen by the human eye instead of killing germs and bacteria.