Analysis Of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

In the book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich mentions the problem of rents is the market. When the market fails to provide necessary goods, such as affordable housing, we expect the government to step in and help. We decide to believe this, because, in the case of health care, the government offers Medicare to the elderly, Medicare to the poor, and many state programs to poor children. But, with housing, radical increases of the rental market has been followed by a retreat of the public sector.

In Barbara Ehrenreich's bold and honest book she tackles the issue of poverty in America head on, by becoming a low wage worker herself. Ehrenreich delves into the often unheard of issues relating to poverty and low wage work, providing her readers with a new perspective on America's working poor and manages to give her audience a stark emotional, yet logical and factual, look into the working class' poverty epidemic. She uses her own anecdotal evidence and supports it with statistics and facts, appeals to ethos by challenging the ethics of corporate America and it costs, finally she hits an emotional chord with readers by reminding them of what low wage workers must endure so that we can live in our America.

After reading the introduction to Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, I immediately felt that that she had advantages over other people that would be working similar jobs since she is an educated native English speaker. No matter what jobs Barbara Ehrenreich will be attempting to work, this will immediately put her ahead of anyone who doesn’t speak fluent English or is an immigrant in the United States. Barbara Ehrenreich admits to this at the end of the introduction chapter by saying, “Just bear in mind, When I stumble, that is in fact the best case scenario: a person with every advantage that ethnicity and education, health and motivation can confer attempting, in a time of exuberant prosperity, to survive in the economy’s lower depths”. Barbara Ehrenreich has everything going her way when it comes to working a job. She is white, educated, and has emergency funds to fall back on if she fails in anyway. She also has the advantage of being able to focus on working while others may

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”.

Ehrenreich is part of the upper-middle class; she is "privileged" to have a job in which she makes money by sitting at her desk and writing (E 2). She has never considered herself one of the working poor before this experiment, even though she explains, "the low-wage way of life had never been many degrees of separation away" (E

As the author moved from locale to locale she identified a variety of recurring hardships faced by the working poor. The chief concern for many was housing. Finding and maintaining economical housing was the principal source of disruption in their lives. For many of the working poor it’s not uncommon to spend more than 50% of income on housing. These leaves a scarce amount of money left over for anything else and creates a situation where the person is always worried about losing their shelter. In a nutshell, it’s Ehrenreich’s conviction that wages are too low and rents are too high. She does speak with many individuals who simply cannot afford the high rental rates and are forced to live with family, friends, or in some

Most of Ehrenreich’s coworkers pay $500 or more for their rent. 5. When Ehrenreich goes for her job interviews, she gets disrespected most of the time because the employers she meets want their applicants to feel like they are lower class people. This happened to her in her interview for Merry Maids when her employer complains about finding decent help and telling her not to calculate her pay into hours. Ehrenreich never talks about an employer being nice, but in her low-wage work, she tries her best to prove herself, but she is still not treated with

Throughout the book Ehrenreich’s co-workers all seem to struggle, such as the trouble with housing in Key West and healthcare in Maine. Having a place to live, eating properly, and healthcare seem to be the biggest cause of concern within the working class. Most of the jobs that she worked, the workers did not have healthcare packages or benefits. So it wasn’t uncommon for them to have trouble trying to manage their health and struggle to pay for medication, let alone a visit to the doctor. Without healthcare and a lack of proper diet (in Maine she had a ‘thirty minute’ lunch break but most of her co-workers barely ate anything close to a meal) it is not hard to see how the working class can easily be shot into poverty; seeing as most of the working class that she had encountered were just living above the poverty line. Reading about what she noticed and noted about her co-workers it isn’t hard to imagine how easy it would be to fall below the poverty

Ehrenreich applies for many different jobs and ends up choosing between Wal-Mart and Menards. She picks Wal-Mart and find herself working in the women 's department organizing and hanging up clothes. She realizes that she must became friendly with the dressing room attendants in order to make her job easier. Again her supervisors constantly get on her about wasting time. She uses her break times to talk to her fellow workers about a union but quits before really getting anything started.

Ehrenreich’s housing situation also makes her stand out from the real poor working class. Ehrenreich (2002) states "As it turns out, the mere fact of having a unit to myself makes me an aristocrat..." (p. 70). Almost every other person she has met has to live with another person. A hefty security deposit is required to get an apartment which many people are unable to pay so they are forced to live with family, friends, or pay for a hotel room. Cohabiting is another system the working poor faces. Ehrenreich does not have to endure the hardship of living with another person.

The situation Ehrenreich is describing is the reality of millions of Americans; they work multiple minimum wage jobs, and are paid “so meagerly that workers can’t save enough to move on.” In addition, Ehrenreich recalls the actions of the U.S. government in regards to assisting these Americans. The article opens with the contribution of President Lyndon B. Johnson on the “War on Poverty”, then the “attack on welfare” in the 90s, concluding with The Great Recession. While writing Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich abandoned her comfortable life to live the life of a low-income American; she worked multiple entry level jobs including Wal-Mart, a maid service, and as a nursing home aide. Through these actions, Ehrenreich establishes her ethos. Because she’s lived the lifestyle she’s describing, she has the authority to speak on the topic. Ehrenreich concludes with her proposal to help the

After the week she spended with her coworkers, she had gained information on how each one of them lives, “Gail is sharing a room in a well-known downtown flophouse for $250 a week, Claude…two room apartment he shares with his girlfriend and two other and unknown person, Annette…lives with her mother, a postal clerk, Marianne, … , and her boyfriend are paying $170 a week for a one-person trailer, Billy, … , lives in a trailer he owns, paying only $400-a-month lot free, Andy, lives on his dry-docked boat, Tina, … , and her husband are paying $60 a night for a room in the Days Inn, Joan, … , lives in a van parked behind a shopping center at night and showers in Tina’s motel room.”(pg. 20-21). The survey that was conducted by the author through her personal experience demonstrated that her coworkers try to split rent in order to pay less and try to save money for the next payment for rent.

Often throughout the book she mentions that it is said that "you're paid what you're worth", saying that little pay results in you not being to good of a person. With that label they were looked down on and viewed kind of as untouchables. They had low pay, long hours, no overtime pay, and no benefits which leads to low socio-economic-status a job that no one wants to pursue. She stressed that poverty wasn’t a sustainable condition, it's a state of emergency. Citizens in the lower classes are left to fend for themselves and the ten, eight, or six dollar jobs are all that's there for them. What she would encourage them to do is to demand to be paid what they're worth because in the end they will be better off.

Ehrenreich writes about the struggle that she suffered when she was working as a food server. She planned to be a part of middle-class employee, because she was curious about why is a white woman going through difficult situation. Barbara was not afraid to experiment about people who lives with minimum wage job. She is a journalist, and her goal was to find an answer for those who are living in poverty. The experiment that she involves with, taught her many things. Bravery was one of them. She was not scared to prove her point of view. She is a heroic person. When she

The rich’s desire to have it all and the poor’s ability to barely make ends meet are both depicted in the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens. People during the French revolution showed desperation in more intense and harsh ways than people today, however the reality is poverty has stricken families for generations. While there is poverty all over the world there is also greed. CEOs, presidents, kings and queens all live beyond their needs. The French revolution started because the people living in poverty were tired of being treated as inferior to the rich.