The Working Poor's Impossibility of Survival Essay

Some Americans are lucky and do not have to rely on their families to help them after they get their own jobs. However, this is not a possibility for the working class poor. Many of Ehrenreich’s fellow workers rely heavily on family to meet their basic needs of housing, food, and help with childcare. Many Americans will put excessive demands on the family unit before going to the government for help. Ehrenreich only had herself to take care of. Many of her coworkers had to go home and take care of their children and household.

The situation Ehrenreich is describing is the reality of millions of Americans; they work multiple minimum wage jobs, and are paid “so meagerly that workers can’t save enough to move on.” In addition, Ehrenreich recalls the actions of the U.S. government in regards to assisting these Americans. The article opens with the contribution of President Lyndon B. Johnson on the “War on Poverty”, then the “attack on welfare” in the 90s, concluding with The Great Recession. While writing Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich abandoned her comfortable life to live the life of a low-income American; she worked multiple entry level jobs including Wal-Mart, a maid service, and as a nursing home aide. Through these actions, Ehrenreich establishes her ethos. Because she’s lived the lifestyle she’s describing, she has the authority to speak on the topic. Ehrenreich concludes with her proposal to help the

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.

Barbara Ehrenreich's intent in the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America exhibited how minimum wage isn't enough for Americans to get by on and that there's no hope for the lower class. Her main objective was achieved by living out the life of the "working poor". During the three cases studies she worked many jobs that are worked by many that are simply striving to live day to day. The jobs she had didn't generate sufficient income to avoid or help her rise out of poverty, in fact the six to seven dollar jobs made survival considerably difficult. Enitially, she believe the jobs didn't require any skill but while on her journey she started to realize they were stressful and drained a lot of energy. In addition to that she

Minimum wage has always been an everyday issue in the United States. People argue that what they’re earning isn’t enough to help them live on a day to day basis. In 2001, the minimum wage in Florida was $5.15 the hour. Barbara Ehrenreich saw how this was becoming a greater issue as time went by, so she decided to take it upon herself and do some investigating on the topic. She decided to go undercover and work a series of low paying jobs to see if it was possible to live on those salaries. Ehrenreich wrote a novel about her experiences and titles it “Nickel and Dimed.” In a specific chapter titles “Serving in Florida”, she focuses on working as a waitress in a restaurant. There she talks about what their expectations are working at

Barbara Ehrenreich 's showed that she didn't have the mind set or worries of a working class person by reminding us as readers the fine line between the kind of performance she is doing and the kind her fellow coworkers do every day on the job. Time and again she lets us sink into her new world of a low-wage worker, only to pull us back with a reminder of the act. 1 She does this experiment to determine whether or not she could both live off the money earned and have enough money at the end of the month to pay the next month's rent. Working class people depend on the money they make on these jobs to survive and provide for their families. She could drop all these jobs she experimented with and go back to her real life without a worry in the

All the minimum-wage occupations that Ehrenreich engages in requires her to work hard everyday. Despite all of Ehrenreich’s diligent work at the end of every month, she barely manages to make ends meet. The people that she interviewed from the Woodcrest Residential Facility were also in the same situation as Ehrenreich. Her twenty four-year old co-worker Lori has, “a serious disk problem and an $8,000 credit card debt,” (Ehrenreich, 118). Therefore it shows that American Dream cannot be attained from hard work. In this case, Lori was injured from her hard work thus leaving her crippled and

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).”

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

McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and cleaning services: all of these have one thing in common-they are all minimum wage jobs. Their pay is low and work load high, and because of this living as a low wageworker is never easy. One must handle many hardships in order to make a few meager dollars, with which most cannot sufficiently live. 'The 'living wage' in the United States is between $9-10.18; sounds great to a college student, but in the real world this kind of money just isn't going to cut it,' (Ramisch). Minimum wage standards for American workers rest at $5.15 per hour, and in such slighted fields, very few make much more than that, perhaps $6-7, but even that is a rarity. The material life of a low-income employee includes bare necessities

The United States, a place where anyone can “pick themselves up by the bootstraps” and realize the American dream of a comfortable lifestyle. Well, for over 30 million Americans this is no longer possible. Though we live in the richest and most powerful country in the world there are many who are living under or at the precipice of the poverty level, “While the United States has enjoyed unprecedented affluence, low-wage employees have been testing the American doctrine that hard work cures poverty” (The Working Poor, 4). This translates to families of four making around 18,850$ a year. And as soon as they find work or move just slightly above that 18,850$ a year (which is still a meager and deprived way to

Barbara Ehrenreich is an American author and some could even say a journalist for her work that was done for her novel called Nickel and Dimed. This novel is based on an experiment that was done by Ehrenreich in which she abandoned her job and left to another state to live off of minimum wage to answer her question “ How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled”. A simple answer that Ehrenreich came to, is that they don 't. A person does not live on 7$ an hour, they survive on it. She has the argument that huge corporations have been victimizing their workers, they only care about the work itself rather than the person doing it. The corporations see their workers as replaceable and they use this against their workers,

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a book composed of Ehrenreich’s experiences working minimum wage in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. Ehrenreich’s sheds light onto what it is like for most minimum wage workers and brings insight into what it truly is like trying to make it on $6-$7 hourly wage. Nickel and Dimed does a wonderful job of giving insight to the everyday lives of the working class and somewhat understanding their lives better. Before reading this book, I had my share of thoughts on the working class based on what I knew from growing up with family members and even my father being apart of the working class. This book reinforced a lot ideas that I had about the working class and opened my eyes into what it means to live above the poverty line.

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 “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich she discusses the issues of low wages. Barbara worked a low paying wage job as a nurse in order to fully understand the hardship. While working this job she meets new people and writes about their struggles with low paying jobs. She believes it is important for everyone to know how the other half lives, and to shed light on the low wage market and many more problems that come with it. This essay will focus on the message Barbara wanted to get across, but also her flawed, hypocritical methods of acquiring this information.