Barbara Ehrenreich Essay

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich Chapter One What would our lives hold if we live below the poverty line? What would the future hold? Would we be able to provide even the simplest and most basic human need to our family? I am quite sure life wouldn’t be easy and it would mostly require 100% effort from us. There are a myriad of question surrounding the lives of those people who are hanging by a thread, the minimum-wage workers. And these questions are just some

educational background. One can have a similar experience as someone near them but never the same. It is hard to replicate the same experience as someone else due to the confounding variables that affect a person’s experience and perception of poverty. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed she tries to experience the life of a low-wage worker by implanting herself in the workplace and residential place of a low-wage worker. However, even though she uses the best mechanisms she can to get the full experience

land of big boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Barbara Ehrenreich, a scientist by training and a well known American writer and political activist emphasizes on the poverty of millions of low wage Americans as a state of emergency. She stated that majority of American workers, about 60 percent; earn less than $14 an hour. To find out, how people survive on six to seven dollar an hour, Barbara moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich is a well-written novel but, decent grammar cannot mask how horrid this book is. I could have gone my entire life without this book. The experiment in this book was good in theory, and could have made the struggles of the lower classes known. But it did not. It only proved that a wealthy white woman can survive on minimum wage. Nickel and Dimed is supposed to be eye opening, to some it was, but to me it was not. Before reading I was previously aware of the struggles

1. What is the topic? 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

pretty astonishing based on what Barbara Ehrenreich went through as she was in different places featured on the book. She was on a

coming to America and living a better life with opportunities to start work at low wages and become prosperous is ridiculously unlikely. The reality of this myth is harsh and discouraging. As Barbara Ehrenreich realized through personal experience, the American dream only occurs in our dreams. Ehrenreich put herself in the position of a minimum wage worker and documented her experience and story in her book, Nickel and Dimed. Throughout the book, she reveals the reality of the American dream and

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

love what they are doing? Or are they working these kinds of jobs just to survive? Barbara Ehrenreich, an American author answers these questions in her book, Nickel and Dimed by showing her “experiment” as she called as a worker with low income and explains how the laborers’ lives look like. That can be explained by Hannah Arendt ideas “Labor, Work, Action” from her book “The Human Condition”. Although Ehrenreich never mentions Arendt in her book, she demonstrates Arendt’s ideas about Labor is necessity

are earnest hardworking folk. In her book “Nickel and Dimed”, Barbara Ehrenreich takes a closer look at the lives and hardships of the lower class. Her goal is to bring awareness to the struggles of these people and while attempting to disprove negative misconceptions about these people. The author writes to an audience of privileged upper class people trying to prove just how difficult it is living in the lower class. Although Ehrenreich does achieve these goals, her arguments are weakened because