Analysis: 'Play Spent'

Katie Clark
Sociology 110
Professor Milman
November 5, 2015
Play Spent In a country where 45 million people struggle to survive below the poverty line, inflation continues to rise as wages remain the same. What happened to the American Dream? As the rich continue to get richer, even those in the middle class can’t seem to catch a break. The structure of American society makes it nearly impossible for those in poverty to rise above, and there are other factors, including race and gender, which play a role.
The game “Play Spent” elicits emotions and gives the player some concept of the difficulty involved with a low-wage life. I played the game a few times, and some of the outcomes were shocking. In one of the games, I stopped to talk with

The gap in wealth between the rich and the poor continues to grow larger, as productivity increases but wages remain the same. There were changes in the tax structure that gave the wealthy tax breaks, such as only taxing for social security within the first $113,700 of income in a year. For CEOs this tax was paid off almost immediately. Free trade treaties broke barriers to trade and resulted in outsourcing and lower wages for workers. In “Job on the Line” by William Adler, a worker named Mollie James lost her job when the factory moved to Mexico. “The job in which Mollie James once took great pride, the job that both fostered and repaid her loyalty by enabling her to rise above humble beginnings and provide for her family – that job does not now pay Balbina Duque a wage sufficient to live on” (489). When Balbina started working she was only making 65 cents an hour. Another huge issue lies in the minimum wage. In 2007, the minimum wage was only 51% of the living wage in America. How can a person live 51% of a life? Especially when cuts were being made in anti-poverty and welfare programs that were intended to get people on their feet. Now, it seems that the system keeps people down, as they try to earn more but their benefits are taken away faster than they can earn. Even when workers tried to get together to help themselves they were thrown

It was implied that the character in the game was a single parent, but being a woman would make this even harder due to the lower wages associated with less testosterone. I am a female, so if I was in this situation this lower wage would affect me. Being Caucasian, I would have an advantage in this situation, because being a minority would make it much more difficult to even get a job. The aforementioned author Barbara Ehrenreich notes in her writing that servers were primarily whites. America is continuing to grow more towards a service industry, and getting these kinds of jobs is difficult as a minority – practically impossible if English is not their first language. In “The Economic Plight of Inner-City Black Males”, author William Julius Wilson discusses how black males that grow up in the inner-city are stuck where they are due to many difficulties they face in getting a job. His research team talked with employers, and one drug store manager said this: “It’s unfortunate but, in my business I think overall [black men] tend to be known to be dishonest” (331). It’s this attitude that makes it even more difficult for minorities to get a job and get out of poverty. I have held a job since I was 15, and never had any problem attaining one in the service industry and now in the medical field. I could have been hired over someone on the basis that my color somehow made me a better