Review Of Bill Moyers 's ' Two American Families '

Together, they made around $83,000 and had around $90,000 in assets which placed them solidly in the middle class. Twelve years later, Allison and David experienced setbacks but increased their income to about $125,000. Their financial assets quadrupled to a whopping $368,000 and saved up thousands of dollars for retirement. However, with the economy downsizing on the heels of the Great Recession and uneven job recovery heavily tilted toward low-wage jobs, David joined millions of other Americans in unemployment. Having spent half a year unemployed, David returned to work working at a significantly lower wage. Over the course of 12 years, David witnessed how work became less stable and more contingent for many Americans. The working experience illustrates a larger transformation in America’s employment landscape, away from middle-class jobs and jobs with significant benefits toward low-paying jobs with few benefits, accelerated by the Great Recession.

In Barbara Ehrenreich’s bestseller, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, the author provides a peek into the daily lives of the unskilled workers forced into the labor market by welfare reforms. She shares her experience, capturing her use of the“undercover” method of journalism to better understand the world of the minimum wage working class. Her memoir details the endeavors she took to maintain a lifestyle under circumstances just as millions of Americans would soon experience it. Parting with her desk job as a writer and essayist, she uncovers what life under the poverty line is like first hand as she enters the world of service, attempting to work some of America’s least attractive jobs. With every account, Ehrenreich concisely

America’s lower class is omnipresent. Waiters, taxi drivers, maids, and cooks are all examples of people who likely make minimum wage or close to it. Much like with the untouchables of Hinduism, people deal with these workers daily and often do not give a second thought at how their lifestyles are. This pervasive disregard for the lower class has led to many people not knowing the seemingly insurmountable difficulties many members of the lower class face daily. Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America seeks to expose the harsh realities of life for these people. She notes that some of coworkers are homeless and that others must support multiple people with an income of less than ten dollars an hour. Repeatedly, she includes details that highlight the desperately destitute conditions of her coworkers. At its core, Nickel and Dimed is a book whose author wrote to edify people of the reprehensible conditions of the lower class in the United States and the injustices of the American system.

There are many families out there who are currently struggling to make ends meet. Regardless of their hard work and commitment, the economy will not take pity. I wish I could say that it was not always like this. Unfortunately, no real change has taken place within the past few years. It may not be as difficult as the time of the Great Depression, but who’s to say that we have recovered from it? My claim is supported by Barbara Ehrenreich, an American author, who published a novel called Nickel and Dimed which digs deep into the economic situation in the early 90’s. Ehrenreich decided to run an experiment becoming a blue collar worker to see if she can manage to make a living on low wages. She later blogs of Nickel and Dimed in 2011 to see

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich tells a powerful and gritty story of daily survival. Her tale transcends the gap that exists between rich and poor and relays a powerful accounting of the dark corners that lie somewhere beyond the popular portrayal of American prosperity. Throughout this book the reader will be intimately introduced to the world of the “working poor”, a place unfamiliar to the vast majority of affluent and middle-class Americans. What makes this world particularly real is the fact that we have all come across the hard-working hotel maid, store associate, or restaurant waitress but we hardly ever think of what their actual lives are like? We regularly dismiss these people as

During the mid eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century the United States of America experienced some difficult times throughout the country. It first had to watch it’s own nation split apart during the Civil War, also the U.S. had just fought for it’s own independence from Great Britain not even a hundred years ago. Then shortly after the war and the reconstruction area began, later moving to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the United States witnessed the Great Depression. Another dark period in U.S. history that virtually affected every one in America at the time in both positive and negative ways. Furthermore, the group that experienced some of the challenging times, both socially and economically during the Great Depression

The book “The Other America”, written by Michael Harrington, describes poverty in America in the 1950s and 1960s, when America became one of the most affluent and advanced nations in the world. The book was written in 1962, and Harrington states that there were about 50,000,000 (about 25% of the total population) poor in America at that time. The author did extensive research with respect to the family income levels to derive the poverty numbers, and used his own observations and experiences to write this book. This book addresses the reasons for poverty, the nature of poverty, the culture of poverty, the blindness of Middle Class America with respect to poverty, and the responsibility of all Americans in addressing the issue of poverty in America.

The Great Depression affected many Americans throughout the 1930s. Many people had no source of income and had no other choice but to travel and find new jobs. In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, George Milton and Lennie Small wander through California in search of a new job that would help them make enough money to live their American dream on “the fatta the lan’”(Steinbeck 14). George and Lennie’s hard work and determination is not enough for them to live their dream. Lennie has a mental disability that slows the two friends down from living their dream; they have to run from job to job because of Lennie’s unintentional actions.

This essay, The Myth of the Model American Family, is a discussion of the concept of an ideal family in the different perspective specifically social, cultural and economic. This is also an attempt to identify the structural changes in relation to the global development and the international economic crisis that immensely created impact on their lives. However, the discussion will limit itself on the different identifiable and observable transformations as manifested in the lifestyles, interrelationships and views of family members and will not seek to provide an assessment of their psycho-social and individual perceptions.

This “middle-class nation” is struggling to support all those who live in its borders and the misconceptions about wealth are vastly overrated. Furthermore, the idea of wealth and stability is incorrect, and there is a very sharp contrast between the rich and poor in the country. As the richest twenty percent of American hold ninety percent of the total household of the total household wealth in the country, those at the bottom have managed very poorly and suffer to get through the days.

There’s an old saying that goes, “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present”, by Alice Morse Earle. The world has become a place taken for granted. Humans are beginning to wish they could live in the past, while others just want to skip over to the future but what ever happened to living right now? Or living in the moment? In the story, “The American Family”, by Stephanie Coontz, she discusses why so many individuals believe American families are facing worse issues now than in the past. She discusses how in the previous years, it was far worse and explains why those people are wrong to assume they are facing worse problems now. In addition, Robert Kuttner and his text, “The politics of family”, supports Coontz’ argument about the dilemmas facing the turn-of-the-century American families and gives the resolutions to those problems; such as talking out problems, women having the right to walk out of unsatisfactory marriages, and lastly, the emancipation for women.

Depression: an endless struggle towards the surface of an ocean of self-doubt and worries. Mental illnesses are not always clear to see and can be expressed in many different ways. Vincent Van Gogh’s own struggles with mental illnesses are seen through his many paintings. It may not be apparent when first looking at Van Gogh’s paintings, but after a while, a pattern can be seen. It is widely known that Van Gogh was not the most stable person mentally, and many thought that it was depicted in his many paintings.

George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm, shows society is glued together by alliances against enemies. The potential is boundless when people join arms to fight an opposing force. If one’s individual presence leaves a long shadow, the other’s allegiance will only compliment and strengthen its formidable approach. An ancient threat is of no use to those in power.

Over the course of my life, I have been subject to social anxiety. Being around others often times makes me really uncomfortable. This really doesn’t necessarily apply in it’s fullest extent when I’m conversing with one person directly, but when talking to a group of people I sometimes stammer and lose focus. This anxiety, though something that may seem trivial, is something that has always held me back from involving myself in larger activities. Although I have been inhibited by my anxiety, I have taken steps to, or at the very least attempt to, involve myself with more things in order to remedy my situation.

These changes in American families have effected and will continue to affect our children and their