Welfare Is Dead

A lot of them could barely pay their rent. Her coworkers were typically straightforward about their personal lives. Usually, they would live with a roommate so rent could be split in half. Gail, a coworker from “Hearthside”, shared a room with a male friend for $250 a week in a well-known downtown flophouse (Ehrenreich, 2001). Additionally, she recognized how poor her coworkers truly were. Some of them did not even have enough money for lunch. They often bought the cheapest food to take to work, which was also not always the healthiest. Health insurance was completely out of the picture for some people. Sacrifices had to be made because there was not enough money to have everything. In certain circumstances, jobs would withhold the first check so that people could not quit right away. Benefits from work, such as paid vacation, insurance, and sick days, did not often come until someone worked at the same job for over year. Low-wage jobs are often manipulating because they need workers, yet they sometimes struggle to get them. Higher education is an extreme challenge for minimum wage workers because of it being so expensive. “Most good jobs require a college degree, but the poor cannot afford to send their children to college” (Baca-Zinn, 2009). Although people often say, “money cannot buy happiness”, it is often the factor that determines everything in life. How much someone makes ultimately regulates housing, food, education level, and overall

In the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich a nonfiction she confronts the problem that the lower class is struggling to get by on the minimum wage offered.She also discusses the difficulties that the lower classes face for example overbearing and strict bosses,having problems with transportation to get to work, barely making rent,nearly no breaks, and having working two jobs back to back in order to provide for their families. She goes undercover as a worker in order to see what it would be like and she found out that the menial labor often overcame her and she would dream of her old life.

Throughout chapter 2, it references back to the life of the three hard working women who hold minimum wage jobs; the women make between $6 and $7 per hour and attempt to make a living with help from the government through Medicaid, welfare checks, and food stamps. The issue with this is

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

Madonna Harris, Susan Brown, Kaitlyn  Hernandez, and Jessica Compton families were all robbed their dignity, self worth and separate from the rest of society because of social incorporation in America’s government. These individuals suffered from poverty physically and emotionally with little to none assistance from the government. The novel “2.00 a day” written by Kaitlyn Edin, a Professor of sociology and public health who had also teamed up with the survey expert on low income communities, Luke Shaefer to assertion that American poverty has groundbreaking research. In which, evidence show social incorporation within government programs that are unequal and undergoes extinction.Throughout the novel, one will learn about individuals,

Thousands of people are signed up to receive welfare in America, this program is designed to aid poor and needy families. However, it has become some people’s way of earning an income. Several argue against and say that welfare is not destroying our country and creating a dependent people who have learned to abuse certain privileges that come with living in this nation.

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”.

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 Working Poor Invisible in America by David K. Shipler revolves around the underprivileged men and women living in America. It is a set of life stories told by the poor individuals mentioned and interviewed by Shipler throughout the book. They tell their life stories including the environment in which they grew up, the hardships they have faced since leaving home including the difficulty of sticking with a job for more than six months, and how they survive making minute annual incomes. Out of the people featured in the book there were numerous categories for different people and their ways they became deprived of financial stability; these include individuals whose bad luck developed when they grew up being physically, emotionally, or sexually

I would build a strong and everlasting foundation, in which will forever change the status quo or perception of government system aid. For example, according to chapter one in two dollars a day, the title reads "Welfare Is Dead" and discusses a heartbreaking story about an divorced mother, Modonna Harris and her  fifteen-year-old daughter, Brianna. Who are on the borderline of poverty, homelessness, and loss of hope. Harris convincingly stated that the Illinois's department of human services  just isn't giving cash assistance to people anymore, therefore the application process is a waste of time and eat away human hope and dignity. Unlike DHS's disappointing and limited system, I would righteously strive to create a program that takes every

David K. Shipler’s The Working Poor: Invisible in America presents a focus on the struggles taking place in society among people, particularly the poor. The author uses perspectives from the citizens’ lives to support the main idea. The beginning of the book focuses on how the poor are often treated by their more powerful employers. The treatment of the poor includes being mistreated, abused, and taken advantage of. The first chapter of the book talks about an Earned Income Tax Credit and how much the poor are helped from this.

Shipler says multiple times in the book that poverty is not only a material issue, it is also a mental one. A person living in poverty describes poverty as “helplessness,” this helplessness defines their sense of identity. Once a person reaches the poverty level, many feel as if they can never improve and thus they feel as they have become poverty. This identity crisis is only worsened when the government strips the identity of individuals for the sake of statistics. The government can not fix the problem if they do not know all of the facts. The government has a responsibility to protect its people, and as such, government workers need to act with a sense of humanity instead of annoyance. One lady who relied on money from the government to feed her family was denied the money when a paper was sent in late. The woman mailed the letter the next day but was denied the money, when she confronted the worker the reason she had not received her money was because the worker did not check the mail. When the government realizes that these are people and not statistics they will be compelled to be more helpful. “Working at the edge of poverty means working on the coldest side of corporate America.” Most assume that when a person is poor, they do not work hard and so people treat them much worse than any other person. If those in poverty are treated fairly, then their sense of self will be improved and the poverty cycle will be broken. Those in poverty are a key part of the national economy, as they work in the jobs that many refuse to. They work in the factories that produce items to sell, which boost the economy. The personal financial choices that a person makes is also discussed in The Working Poor: Invisible in America. Each choice a person makes could be detrimental to their future. Investing in certain job

After reading the book $2.00 a Day, Living on Almost Nothing in America. I was surprised to learn about the amount of people living below poverty in the United States of America. There are two sociological concepts that can be used to interpret this book. Social Class, and Conflict Theory. Social class is demonstrated by the lifestyle and perception of which social class you belong and how those of a different social class treat those of a lower class in addition to the struggle of those in the underclass which entails the harshest lifestyle with the almost certainty of never leaving the underclass. Conflict theory is demonstrated between the struggle of those who depend on Welfare, WIC and

Poverty is a serious dilemma in which people live in starvation, do not get educated, and have to work hard to survive, similar to what the Youngers face in the story, A Raisin in the Sun. Their situation is so bad that Ruth can’t even afford to give her own son fifty cents to take to school even after it was a requirement and not just a want. Beneatha wants to become a doctor but does not have the resources to pay for a higher education. Poverty has been a complete chaos since decades ago and sadly, is still one today. Robert Rector examined that the Census Bureau reported “a record [of] 46.2 million persons, or roughly one in seven Americans, were poor in 2010” (Rector, 1). However, comprehending poverty involves “looking behind these numbers

The Working Poor: Invisible in America gives an accurate depiction of the social problems and social policies that are designed to keep the poor, poorer. Shipler uses a variety of stories to depict social welfare programs like the minimum wage act, immigration, Social Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability (SSD), healthcare act, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), drug addiction, sexual abuse, Individual Education Plans (IEP), and the gender pay gap along with many others. The overarching theme throughout the book was that the working poor never make enough money to cover their expenses and the wage never goes up enough over the span of their lifetime.