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More handpicked essays just for you.
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In the piece “Serving in Florida” by Barbara Ehrenreich several claims about poverty are made. At the time the piece was published in 2001, many Americans failed to accept the reality in the growing complications of poverty in the country. At that time there was not a wide variety of help for those on the poverty line. Ehrenreich embraces this idea, “There are no secret economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there are a host of special costs” (155). The poor commonly find themselves in minimum wage paying jobs, with no added benefits and harsh working standards. For many, it is difficult to overcome these conditions, especially when life provides its own burdens. Ehrenreich shows the example of her coworker Marianne’s boyfriend, and how he was laid off because of the “special costs”. A cut on his foot caused him to miss work, a low paying job and lack of benefits preventing him from providing the proper prescribed antibiotics (155). Since then the affordability of help for those on the poverty line has improved. The passing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, mandated that all citizens must have healthcare coverage. A marketplace was …show more content…
Both pieces attempted to show a certain aspect in life. They tried to inform others and evoke a sense of pathos, to convey pity in hopes of sparking a change in the situation. The difference in Eighner’s piece is that he shows that even though he experienced some of the worst scenarios, he was still satisfied for what he had. On the other hand, Ehrenreich depicts the hardships for those who are not at the complete bottom. Even though the people who were introduced in “Serving in Florida” were better off financially than Lars Eighner, many failed to recognise that the situation could always be worse. She shows how some are not grateful for what they have, but are instead searching for
There are several inconsistencies about the situations that Ehrenreich placed herself in and the real li...
Ehrenreich’s “biting humor” gives off the sense of her stereotypical views, bluntly stating her biased opinions. Some of these views are understandable, and sometimes even excusable, considering her background of high education and/or lack of personal experience that is like majority of the people she encounters throughout her journey. However, there are points in which her wisecracks go too far. During her time in Florida, there is a point when four of her tables fill up at once. When a customer from a table of British tourists complains, she states, “Princess Di refuses to eat her chicken strips with her pancake and sausage special since, as she now reveals, the strips were meant to be an appetizer.” (p. 47). She also refers to another table of customers as “yuppies” (p. 47). When making these stereotypical judgments of people, she puts herself on a pedestal, almost as if she disregards the fact that she may fall under the same category of those whom she is making the comments about. When she references the food at the location of second job she takes in Florida, she begins describing it with: “Picture a fat person’s hell, and I don’t mean a place with no food.” (p. 29)....
According to a 1997 report of the National Coalition for the Homeless, “nearly one-fifth of all homeless people are employed in full or part-time jobs”. In the book Nickel and Dimed, On Not Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author goes undercover in order to investigate and experience first-hand how life is for America’s “working poor”. The “working poor” are defined as individuals who have a full-time job, sometimes more than one, but still cannot afford the basics of shelter, food and adequate healthcare. As one can imagine, this led to many public health concerns. In each of the three locations visited, Ehrenreich realizes that for many, “getting by” in America can sometimes be a daunting task.
Through this, the reader understands that the author has an advanced amount of knowledge on the subject she will be covering throughout the novel. Feeling as if there will be no need to question her findings or conclusions (due to her vast educational background and the research she put in), the audience is much more susceptible and therefore predisposed to Ehrenreich’s arguments, making it easier for her to make her case.
The article “Back At Square One’: As States Repurpose Welfare Funds, More Families Fall Through Safety Net” was written by Peter S. Goodman. The article is about the struggle that people have all over the United States. Many of these individuals struggle to provide food, a decent place to live, and other common standards of living to their families. Goodman writes of a few women but mainly focuses on a woman named Brianna Butler who is struggling. In the reading there are many struggles she faces such as getting funding and getting help. Her major dilemma is that in order to receive financial assistance she needs to attend a four-week class, but no one will watch her child so she cannot go to the classes, so she does not receive the money. According to the article There are thousands of people who experience daily strife and when the United States economy experienced trouble many businesses had to lay people off and this created an even
Poverty in America is a very complex issue that can be looked at from many directions. There are a plethora of statistics and theories about poverty in America that can be confusing and at times contradicting. It is important to objectively view statistics to gain a better understanding of poverty and to wade through the stereotypes and the haze of cultural views that can misrepresent the situation.The official poverty line in America begins with a person making at or below $12,060. To calculate the poverty line for a family, an additional $4,180 is added to the base of $12,060 for each additional member(“Federal Poverty Level Guidelines”). According to the last U.S. census, over 45 million or 14.5% of Americans are at or below the poverty line(Worstall). At this level, the U.S. poverty level has not changed much from the 1970s when the government began a “War on Poverty.” However,
In her unforgettable memoir, Barbara Ehrenreich sets out to explore the lives of the working poor under the proposed welfare reforms in her hometown, Key West, Florida. Temporarily discarding her middle class status, she resides in a small cheap cabin located in a swampy background that is forty-five minutes from work, dines at fast food restaurants, and searches all over the city for a job. This heart-wrenching yet infuriating account of hers reveals the struggles that the low-income workers have to face just to survive. In the except from Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich uses many rhetorical strategies to illustrate the conditions of the low wage workers including personal anecdotes of humiliation at interviews, lists of restrictions due to limited
Ehrenreich opens up her book at an extremely difficult time in her life, battling cancer. Not only is she battling cancer but she is at a time where she is being exposed to the darkest times to positive
The biggest appeal that Ehrenreich makes is after she ends up walking out of the housekeeping job/waitress job because she cannot handle it anymore." I have failed I don't cry, but I am in a position to realize, for the first time in many years, that the tear ducts are still there and still capable of doing their job." (Ehrenreich, 48) This is the biggest appeal because Ehrenreich is quitting on the whole project. She is basically telling the readers that it is impossible for her, a "well-off", woman to live the life of a low wage worker.
My views about Ehrenreich’s novel that it was filled with educational details of minimum wage job occurrences. The author captures concrete memories of her experiences of several job positions. Working in several jobs of hard manual labor is exhausting for the mind and body. The job experiments involving all these jobs to see what many struggling people endure on a daily basis. I thought the experiments resulted in average, and intolerable work environments. Working one or two jobs was needed to survive and pay for necessities. From my perspective, it was a useful trial to show readers the hardships people of every culture deal with constantly.
As stated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, “the test of our progression is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Many people may agree with this statement considering that the United States is such a wealthy country and in 2012, 46.5 million people were living in poverty in the United States and 15% of all Americans and 21.8% of children under age eighteen were in poverty.The honest truth is that many people do not know the conditions this group of people must live in on a daily basis because of the small number of people who realize the struggle there is not a great amount of service. In the article Too stressed for Success, the author Kevin Clarke asks the question “What is the cost of being poor in America?” and follows the question by explaining the great deals of problems the community of poverty goes through daily by saying, “Researchers have long known that because of a broad reduction in retail and other consumer choices experienced by America's poor, it is often simply more expensive to be poor in the United States.
Until Obama-care, The United States was one of the only developed nations that did not provide some sort of health care for its citizens. To most other nations that do provide healthcare, it is because it is considered a human right that all people should be entitled to. That hasn’t been the case in America, however, where only those who could afford it could have healthcare plans. Those who stand to gain the most from universal healthcare are the already mentioned 45 million americans who currently don’t have any form of healthcare. For many of these individuals, there are many obstacles that prevent them from gaining healthcare. 80% of the 45 million are working class citizens, but either their employer doesn’t offer insurance, or they do but the individual can n...
The author also briefly demonstrates in Chapter 11 how healthcare programs fail the poor. She mentions the high medical costs of antirejection drugs and how Medicare refuses to cover costs after a year. This is not a main argument of the chapter but an important one. The goal of Chapters 10
Like most people whom conduct experiments, Ehrenreich must first establish credibility of her knowledge of this subject. She does this in her introduction in numerous ways. Ehrenreich comes out saying that she has a Ph.D in biology but has a fancy for writing. She starts off with her exposure to low wage paying jobs by using her sister and her husband a companion for over a decade. Her sister, who use to work for the phone company as a sales representative, a factory work and receptionist who described it her experiences as “the hopelessness of being a wage slave”. Her husband use to work for $4.50 an hour in a warehouse before he was fortunate enough to land a good paying job with the union workers the Teamsters.
I did not like a few parts of the book, they seemed to be confusing, but all these attributes in the end showed a human spirit flaws and all. Ehrenreich wants to find ways to improve the quality of life of the working class. While working for Wal-Mart, Ehrenreich discussed unionizing with her co-workers. The purpose of the union is so that the workers can get a higher hourly wage. Her downfall in Minneapolis is when she can’t find affordable lodging.