“No one ever said that you could work hard—harder even than you ever thought possible—and still find yourself sinking even deeper into poverty and debt.” This is a quote by Barbara Ehrenreich who wrote “Nickel and Dimed,” she is a journalist with a PHD in biology and writes about her own story as she chooses to change her entire lifestyle, face the hardships of being a part of the working poor class just to see if she can survive. Throughout the book she illustrated the different jobs she endured and the struggles that came along with the jobs. Her story highlights the social inequality she experienced based on her status, working poor class, routine lifestyle, her experience living on the edge and the stagnant pay she received. There was a lot of social inequality in her journey that many Americans seem to overlook on the poor working class.…
We know in the world of today, most households have two incomes to maintain the basic everyday needs. We all have worked jobs that paid bare minimum, gave crappy hours along with fatigue. Gilbert and Henslin divided the lower class into the Working Poor and the Underclass (Gilbert The American Class Structure 1998). The Working Poor’s employment is in the service and manual labor and the Underclass relies solely on government aid and has not participate in the workforce.…
isolated with her child to the small house where she must cook, clean, and care for her…
Low-wage earners are often subjected to economic discrimination and marginalization on the basis of their age, race, education level, and socioeconomic status (The Leadership Conference, 2001). Unequal and unsustainable pay serves as an infringement of civic equality, as it fosters subjugation and oppression. Workers who earn minimum wage experience diminished economic freedom, as they encounter lesser opportunity and a decreased quality of life (Brooks,…
In the United States of America, there is not a federal minimum wage. Some states have their own minimum wage, but can be very low, for example, Georgia’s minimum wage is only $5.15 an hour. There are also four states that do not require a minimum wage. People are struggling to a day to day basis with putting food on the table for their family. If our country had a required federal minimum wage of $15 an hour, there would be fewer people who will struggle financially.…
In America, the public majority tends to believe that poor people deserve to be in poverty as they are lazy. In reality, the nation’s poor work full-time, sometimes over fifty hours a week, yet still do not earn enough to escape the depths of poverty. Minimum wage is what these individuals earn, as deemed appropriate from the low skill level of the jobs they work. Often the level of incomes received are not made to be living wages and are found to be product of unreasonable systems. Making a living wage in America is unlike the textbook definitions since there are various standards of living within each state that dictate the level. As a result including, an ever-growing population of consumer workers, deskilled jobs, and irrationality caused from McDonaldization, countless individuals, specifically: the uneducated, Blacks, Latinos, and young adults, fall into a class of “working poor”.…
Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist who posed as an unskilled worker in 1998 to highlight the struggles encountered every day by Americans attempting to live on minimum wage. Ms Ehrenreich had always been interested in poverty. As the result of the new law, people would be expected to leave welfare and get jobs, sounds good. Unfortunately, the jobs they were able to get really didn’t pay enough to live on. Serving in Florida is about her experience as waitress trying to make ends meet just like millions of Americans do everyday. The overall message of the story is that wages in America are too low and rents are too high.…
hear family, and her friends undergo many hardships such as bad living conditions, little to no…
labor or live in an inferior building. Therefore, the author makes some rules for herself on this…
After reading about the travels Barbara Ehrenreich took in the book Nickel and Dimed as an attempt to “discover some hidden economies in the world of the low-wage worker” to Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, I have been able to deepen my understanding of the harsh reality people face while working in low income jobs. (Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, p. 3) She undertook several different types of low wage jobs such as a waitress, hotel housekeep, nursing home cook, maid and a retail associate. The workers she encountered in the low-income workforce struggle daily with the grueling task of trying to find affordable and safe housing, medical insurance, fair workplaces, and many other different issues that apart of trying to survive on minimum wage. Barbara’s adventures have opened my eyes to the rude reality that most low-wage workers truly face.…
deal of her over the next nine years. She worked a succession of continuous low…
She never enrolled into any colleges, instead she moved to Dillon, North Carolina for 6 months working as a hostess at a restaurant named “The Peddler” making 6.25 dollars an hour. After 6 months she decides to move back to Hawaii in the year of 2002. She moved in with her boyfriend's house (William Roback) for a year working as a receptionist making 9 dollars an hour. Later that year she ended her job merely because she was pregnant with her second child Joseph. On the night of January 15, 2003 she gave birth to the her first boy (Joseph Kahanuola…
She worked two jobs. One was on the night shift as a nurse, and the other was cleaning houses…
When she was working at the hospital she read the news paper and it talked about the horrible conditions…
In the first portion of the article she describes her life with her husband before starting a family, then moves on to tell us [avoid “you,” “us,” “we,” etc.] about the burdens of being a full time homemaker. She describes the stereo typical life in that time period where the husband often worked late and spent little time at home, while she was at home taking care of every day chores as well as the taking care of the children. When her children had become older, she stated that she was, “restricted to the company of demanding preschoolers and to the four walls of an apartment”.…