Waging A Living Analysis

Besides a check, that she had to turn right back over to pay rent and buy few groceries in order to live for the next day. In turn, that same above described situation is the depressing truth about the cycle of poverty and the experience of one woman who placed herself in a project in order to relate the desperation of minimum wage workers of America.

The novel, “The Working Poor” by David K. Shipler gives us an inside look into the lives of the lower class and he explores exactly what it means to do hard, exhausting but honest work in America. The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below the poverty line. While poverty is often associated with joblessness, a significant proportion of the poor are actually employed. Shipler teaches us that just because you have finally become employed does not mean that most or all of your worries are over, often times they are increased. Largely because they are earning such low wages, the working poor face numerous obstacles that make it difficult for many of them to find and keep a job, save up money, and maintain a sense of self-worth. Shipler did an amazing job bringing light to the “forgotten America”.

A journalist who has Ph.D in biology wanted to know how people could live with just seven dollars per hour. In Nickel and Dimed, the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, introduces how people live with low-wage jobs. She told that employers sometime see their employees as potential criminal, their employees' work environments do not suit for their works, and the employees's wages does not satisfy what they need to survive.

“Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich reveals the shocking truth of trying to live on minimum wage in the United States. Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist, decides to experiment living on a low-income job after discovering the welfare reform legislation in 1996. She tries to survive on minimum wage for a month in three US cities; Key West, Portland, and Minneapolis. In Key West Florida, she learned about the challenges of working in a lower class job and trying to “get by.” The only way to afford basic necessities is by having two jobs or to have someone help pay, such as a working husband.

“$2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, discuss the 1.5 million Americans with an income of only $2 a day. Throughout the book, Edin and Shaefer discover the strategies and living conditions of 18 families living on $2 a day by spending months and even years documenting them. The authors illustrate the troubling trend of a low-wage labor market that fails to provide a living wage. Beyond the data, this novel presents a memoir of rising poverty and income inequality in America. Marx’s conflict theory comes into play on how the poor and unemployed essentially fight against each other for basic human needs like food and water in order to survive.

In the following video presented by NYTimes, “Labors Fifteen Dollar Wage Strategy,”A Mother describes the struggles she faces and key reasons to raise the minimum wage. By this, she described feeling depleted in the manner of working two jobs and still not being able to get out of debt. This highly affected her personal life including raising and being able to spend time with her family. As a result, the time spent with her daughter suffered from the long hours she worked. The speaker in the video claims that by attending the convention she can meet people going through her situation and not feel alone. Therefore, in the video it is said that childcare, food, and housing are necessities to live, which concludes the point of the speakers views

In the documentary "My Reality: A Hidden America," produced by ABC News, reporter Diane Sawyer interviews hard-working, middle-class American families struggling to make ends meet while also examining the growing gap between the low wage workers and the upper-class. The documentary follows the lives of different individuals from firefighters, contract workers, teacher assistants, fast food workers, and even Biotechnology workers. The film gives the viewers a glimpse of the hardships that these low wage middle-class Americans go through on a daily basis. Some of these hardships include traveling eighty miles to and from work each day to having to donate blood plasma just to make a few extra bucks for a child's birthday present. On average, middle-class Americans, which make up roughly seventy-five percent of the population, are making only $54,000 a year.

The book $2.00 a day was written to acknowledge the struggle of those who live deep under the poverty line, if you can even consider that to be a living. It's two authors, Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer, show current (2015) real world examples from struggling single parents, homeless families, and those who have fell into a series of unfortunate events demonstrating how those who live in the $2.00 a day poor are not lazy, but instead the opposite. Throughout the trials of trying to find a job, keeping food on the table, and raising children, these people have been working much harder to stay alive in poverty than those who are fortunate enough to be living in the middle or upper class. As the book progresses through the different stories

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

People are still living on $2 a day here in the United States. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, how is it possible for people to live with this little amount of money? I know that I cannot. In $2.00 a Day, Jennifer Hernandez, a single mother with two kids, is a person who lives on $2 a day as she tries to survive and support herself and her kids in the collapsing economy. The minimum wage job for cleaning houses reinforces the cycle of poverty that Jennifer and her kids live in. This cycle of poverty reveals that there needs to be major changes to the economical infrastructure of the United States since the poor cannot get themselves out of poverty even though they actively look for work or have a job.

In the article “How Match.com Aims to Stay Relevant” by Tara Nieuwesteeg the writers tells a story about two people who met on the website years ago and are happily married today. Lauren Whitson, 30 was in search of a relationship with a man whose relationship history was a mystery to her. She created a profile on the site in hopes of at least meeting new people. After she received a few creepy messages she thought twice about using the site to find her

In Barbara Ehrenreich’s documentary novel, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America (2001), she claimed that it is almost impossible to live off of minimum wage in the united states. She supports her claim by writing a documentary novel explaining the details of the life of the American struggles caused by the minimum wage. Through her book, she supports that minimum wage salary is insufficient means of survival and leads to a difficult life. After encountering many people who falsely accuse welfare receivers of being lazy and not work hard enough, she wrote a book to challenge and change the public’s negative opinion towards them and also about the day when the minimum wage workforce will stand up for themselves and demand to have a higher wage. Ehrenreich’s purpose for writing this novel was to bring attention to wage workforce by showing the general American public the life of their fellow citizens who are struggling to survive.

Still, even those who push above a poverty-level wage can fall into a trap. Between $7 to $10 an hour, they make just enough to start losing what little safety net there is.”

Veronica Hernandez began her working career in a factory sweatshop. She was only 8 years old. After more than 12 years of intense and monotonous work in a number of different factories, Hernandez still, “felt as poor as the day she first climbed onto the lower rungs of the global assembly line” (Ferriss, source#2). Veronica works about 45 hours a week for only a base salary of $55, an occupation where she assembles RCA televisions by the Thomson Corporation. While some people you know complain of not having cable or enough channels for their big screen television, Veronica is blessed that she even owns one. She lives in a one room hut that includes no more than an out-house and an old refrigerator. She has

Wilson gives an example of a mother in a “new poverty neighborhood” that was on welfare even though she wanted to be employed, and she says that, while she was working, she was making only $7 an hour. Since she couldn’t pay the babysitter or get medical insurance for her children, she applied for public aid, and she could not even find a job that her benefits.