Summary Of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

Ehrenreich’s housing situation also makes her stand out from the real poor working class. Ehrenreich (2002) states "As it turns out, the mere fact of having a unit to myself makes me an aristocrat..." (p. 70). Almost every other person she has met has to live with another person. A hefty security deposit is required to get an apartment which many people are unable to pay so they are forced to live with family, friends, or pay for a hotel room. Cohabiting is another system the working poor faces. Ehrenreich does not have to endure the hardship of living with another person.

In short, lack of motivation in exchange for more red tape causes investors and landlords to move towards more profitable options. This movement of money and resources tends to negatively impact people trying to find a place to live, most notably the poor. The National Multi Housing Council (NMHC) states that prospective customers must pay finder fees to find a rental property due to a presumably growing scarcity of available housing. As if this were not bad enough, in some communities rental properties are handed down to friends and family, so they never quite leave the market. In order to obtain housing, new consumers are forced to pay “key money” and other fees. These costs tend to impact young, single, and poor families the most.

Americans across the United States search for the perfect home, location and square footage of course a great price to pay for their castle. Finding an affordable place to live is ideal, and necessary for survival in this day of age. As the years go by the cost of living increases but Americans do not receive a cost of living raise. The demand for affordable housing is on a all time high, but so is the cost of housing in the metropolitan areas across the United States. America must take care of its citizens and should provide affordable housing programs, to assist Americans to either purchase or rent a home.

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

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America was the first book of its type that I’ve ever read, a real life analysis of what its like to “live in poverty,” working minimum wage jobs trying to make ends meet day in and day out. It was an intriguing story of how a woman with plenty went on to document how she lived without and I found that Ehrenreich’s commentary throughout the book offered a refreshing perspective to the usual conversation that surrounds poverty; she never thought that she was better or better off than those she met working low-paying jobs, and she was always conscious of how race intersected with class throughout her so-called field experiment.

When the recession happened, and the housing market crashed in Los Angeles a few years back many people lost their homes. The foreclosure crisis displaced many homeowners, drove up demand, and rental prices increased. Now, it is almost two years later, and the dramatic rent increases continue to soar. There would be no issue with cost of living increase except; the increases in income have yet to make the same shifts. “In many cities, rent is rising out reach of

As the author moved from locale to locale she identified a variety of recurring hardships faced by the working poor. The chief concern for many was housing. Finding and maintaining economical housing was the principal source of disruption in their lives. For many of the working poor it’s not uncommon to spend more than 50% of income on housing. These leaves a scarce amount of money left over for anything else and creates a situation where the person is always worried about losing their shelter. In a nutshell, it’s Ehrenreich’s conviction that wages are too low and rents are too high. She does speak with many individuals who simply cannot afford the high rental rates and are forced to live with family, friends, or in some

What is known about the dearth of inexpensive living spaces in high-cost, heavy populated areas is its scarcity is a function of supply. Demand remains a non-issue for policy makers as demand has

Firstly, the Have Nots, or the working class, could barely afford housing. “Most urban resident, however, could

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.

Several things can influence how a person performs: gender, race, and even class. In a sense, class could be considered the easiest thing to perform, and can also change the quickest. Nothing needs to be drastically, physically changed in order to perform a different class than the one a person is a part of. However, performing “up” or “down” in class takes a lot of effort. When someone performs “up” in class, they were persecuted and looked down upon compared to someone who performs “down.” By using the excerpt "Serving in Florida" from Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and the play, Six Degrees of Separation, by John Guare, we see how performing different classes than the one each person is a part affect themselves and those around them

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a book that can be appropriately described as a piece of investigative journalism. While eating an expensive lunch with the editor of Harper’s, Lewis Lapham, Ehrenreich’s sociological interest is piqued. She is perplexed at how low wage workers manage to pay their expenses with seemingly almost no financial resources. Because of the recent welfare reform at the time (2001), one of her main interests was how women that were used to receiving welfare would survive on $6- $7 an hour. Therefore, she decides to partake in an experiment. She creates a drastically lowered version of her identity, claiming she is a divorced homemaker reentering the workforce after several years. Her main goal is to see if

I believe everyone can agree that far too many families are cast into the cold and unknown due to the rising cost of housing

Affordable Housing is the social problem and the social issue addressed by the social problem is homelessness. Homelessness is “an individual who lacks housing (without regard to whether the individual is a member of a family), including an individual whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility (e.g., shelters) that provides temporary living accommodations, and an individual who is a resident in transitional housing” (HHS, 2016).

Despite living in a low-cost residence, having a reduced grocery budget and only paying for basic utilities such as electricity and water, expenses can feel overwhelming, especially if your household has a lower-than-average income. This essay, however, argues that many people in this situation have a better economy than they understand.