Rhetorical Analysis Of Nickel And Dimed

Besides a check, that she had to turn right back over to pay rent and buy few groceries in order to live for the next day. In turn, that same above described situation is the depressing truth about the cycle of poverty and the experience of one woman who placed herself in a project in order to relate the desperation of minimum wage workers of America.

Some Americans are lucky and do not have to rely on their families to help them after they get their own jobs. However, this is not a possibility for the working class poor. Many of Ehrenreich’s fellow workers rely heavily on family to meet their basic needs of housing, food, and help with childcare. Many Americans will put excessive demands on the family unit before going to the government for help. Ehrenreich only had herself to take care of. Many of her coworkers had to go home and take care of their children and household.

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

In Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by In America" we read about a middle aged journalist undertaking a social experiment of the greatest magnitude. The journalist is Ehrenreich herself and the experiment was to find out how a woman, recently removed from welfare, due to policy reform, would make it on a six or seven dollar an hour wage. The experiment itself started out as just a question in the middle of lunch with one of Ehrenreich's editors, it soon turned into a job assignment. Before starting the experiment, Ehrenreich laid out some ground rules for her to follow during the duration of the assignment. First she could never use

In the United States, Americans are painfully aware that poverty is a massive upsurge. Americans are getting poor and poor by the minute and that’s a problem. In the book “Men We Reaped” Jesmyn Ward explains that society sees our life being worth nothing. If I had the choice to change poverty I would raise the minimum wage so more people would want to work and the money can at least accommodate for a 3 house family with one person working.

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.

18) Barbara Ehrenriech worked low wage jobs to understand the outcomes of low-wage work. This is

A journalist who has Ph.D in biology wanted to know how people could live with just seven dollars per hour. In Nickel and Dimed, the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, introduces how people live with low-wage jobs. She told that employers sometime see their employees as potential criminal, their employees' work environments do not suit for their works, and the employees's wages does not satisfy what they need to survive.

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

In her expose, Nickel and Dime, Barbara Ehrenreich shares her experience of what it is like for unskilled women to be forced to be put into the labor market after the welfare reform that was going on in 1998. Ehrenreich wanted to capture her experience by retelling her method of “uncover journalism” in a chronological order type of presentation of events that took place during her endeavor. Her methodologies and actions were some what not orthodox in practice. This was not to be a social experiment that was to recreate a poverty social scenario, but it was to in fact see if she could maintain a lifestyle working low wage paying jobs the way 4 million women were about to experience it. Although Ehrenreich makes good

Credibility of an author based on their reputation, fair-mindedness, and sincerity is also known as ethos, which Ehrenreich establishes several times throughout the book to make her

What must the U.S. economy look like, when viewed through the everyday experiences of the working poor? Is America the land of opportunity or simply an economic trap from which there is little chance of escape? Taking a short view of the economy, where one low-wage job looks much like another and mobility is a challenge, the working poor are in an economic vise; squeezed by high prices for basic commodities like housing, food and gasoline on one end and unable to change their basic job situation on the other.

In Chapter three of “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich, one of the most significant scenarios I would say is when Barbara is talking with Caroline about her lifestyle. Caroline lives in a $825-a-month rental home with her husband and two children. They are considered middle-class because they make close to $40,000 a year, but scraping by to make ends meet. Caroline goes on to tell of her low-wage life; this includes a hotel room cleaning job in Florida, and now book keeping job in Minnesota. Also, Caroline tells Barbara of her struggles with balancing a job and children, and her own health when living in Florida.

In the end Barbara ended up breaking all of the rules she had set for herself but she feels that she did a good job at her project. She was alarmed by the way that some of her co-workers lived and felt that she learned a lot from her experiences.

less than they need to live on" ( 270.) A good percent of high school graduates move right on to college. They graduate college and then they usually move on to make a good amount of money to live a satisfying life. However, college is not made for everyone, and what would our world be with only professionals? I agree with Ehrenreich that the minimum wage is too low because, while people with open opportunities earn a better future for their families, many like my own, are fighting to get through on a daily basis due to our economy.