Nickel And Dimed Essay

Thomas Friedman, author of, “globalization; the super story,” erroneously implies in his essay, that with the current “integration” and “globalization” (which are terms used to classify a “new industrial revolution” driven by powerful new information and communication technologies), of today’s economy, individuals have obtained more power and influence than ever before in history. Specifically, the rise of such technologies as the Internet and email, have empowered individuals to a new level of influence by giving them the tools necessary for global broadcast. Friedman uses Jody Williams, a Nobel prize winner, as an example of this new phenomena when she used E-mail to organize five continents into signing a treaty. This idea of “super empowered individuals” falls short when actually applied to “real life” circumstances, as Barbara Ehrenriech, author of, “Nickel and
In, “Nickel and Dimed,” the people working as maids are, for the most part, living off of welfare and getting paid $6.65 per hour to clean the homes of people who most likely make six figures. According to Friedman, these maids would have a connection to the hierarchy of economic power, simply by knowing the owners of the homes or hotels, yet in reality this brings them no closer to power than anyone else. In fact, the maids were rarely ever in the same house more than once, which, “is a service to its customers: there are so sticky and possibly guilt ridden relationships involved, because the customers communicate almost entirely with the office manager(Ehrenreich 475)