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Effects of income inequality in the usa
Effects of income inequality in the usa
Income inequality and its effects
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Barbara Ehrenreich proves to be informed on certain issues like how to correctly handle the money that she was bringing in and paychecks. While she was working as a waitress, she would bring in tips but when she decides that she needs to try different job, Ehrenreich is no longer receiving those tips and comes up with the solution of having to work two jobs by the time she’s in Minnesota. “Now to find a job. I know from my Key West experiences to apply for as many jobs as possible, since a help-wanted ad may not mean that any help is wanted just now.”(Ehrenreich, 57). Looking at this example you can see that Ehrenreich has well informed herself as she continues with her investigation by knowing what to do when it comes to looking for a job
Have you ever wondered how women helped our country? There was and still are women who changed or change the world today. Like Shirley Muldowney,and Rose Will Monroe, or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, maybe Hillary Clinton. Some of these women changed little things and some changed big things, but they all made a difference in their own way.
The book ‘Nickel and Dimed’ follows the author Barbra Ehrenreich on her on a journalism experiment to see how someone could get by on the minimum wage of $6 or $7. While Barbra is familiar with the poverty issue in American she herself with a Ph.D. and comfortable life was not familiar with feeling the effects of poverty. Before the experiment started Barbra set down some ground rules, first being, she could not search for jobs that require skills from her higher education (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 4). All the jobs she applied for had to be starting level jobs that someone coming out of high school could obtain. Second rule, she had to take the job offering the highest wage, and do her best to hold the position (Ehrenreich, 2011, p. 4). She was to try her hardest at all the jobs and not slack off reading or try to speak out against management
My interview was with a girl in her late 20’s that worked a part time job at a retail store called T.J. Maxx. My interview agrees with Ehrenreich’s conclusions 100 percent. She moved here from another state to live with
Barbara Ehrenreich, started her socioeconomic experiment in Key West, Florida. Her initial effort is to secure a place to live and a job that will support her. In the beginning, Ehrenreich finds that applying for low wage jobs can be a daunting task. Eventually, she finds work as a waitress at a local restaurant. The author discovers that the work is physically and mentally challenging. Ehrenreich develops a distaste for management while working at the establishment. She watches management sit around and treat employees poorly. Management does not value their workforce and routinely show a lack of compassion for their employees. Additionally, Ehrenreich uncovers an economic condition that the working poor face. The dilemma is if the working poor cannot make enough money for a security deposit for an apartment, then they are forced to live in crappy hotels. This enlightens another socioeconomic issue, nutritious food. Most hotel rooms do not have kitchenettes in which food can be prepared. This perpetuates many working poor going to fast food establishments to eat. Without health insurance, this can provide more health issues for low wage workers.
...et by as best as they know how. Although Ehrenreich stresses the need for change as far as the unskilled jobs and workers are concerned, sadly she offers no real solution to this problem.
For instance, Ehrenreich's indirect audience is the higher class of people, and Eighner's audience is the people who look down on dumpster divers, which is more than likely to be the higher class people who Ehrenreich addresses in her essay. However, although Ehrenreich and Eighner both have the same audience, Ehrenreich is more judgmental of her subject, people who work low income jobs, than Eighner is. Ehrenreich states, "He accepts my resignation with a shrug..." She states this when she is reflecting on the moment that she resigned from the diner where she was working. In this particular passage, she seems very judgmental of the boss of the diner where she worked, almost as if suggesting that people quit constantly. Therefore, in one way or another, saying that low income workers can't commit. In comparison to Ehrenreich, Eighner is more informing of his audience when it comes to people who don't necessarily make enough to live off of. In one paragraph, he states, "After all, the finding of objects is becoming something of an urban art." Because Eighner has experienced the lifestyle of low income workers, he is more appreciative of the skills they have, leading him to be more accepting of their lifestyle. Eighner uses this passage to inform his audience of the skills that 'dumpster divers' have. The way that both writers address their
Rose rejected the idea that education can only be learned through schooling and suggested that education can happen in the workplace. By mentioning the social and mental skills his mother obtained working at the diner and the advanced problem solving skills his uncle obtained on the shop floor, the author shows that blue-collar workers are constantly learning every day on the job. In the conclusion of the essay, Rose says “To acknowledge a broader range of intellectual capacity is to take seriously the concept of cognitive variability.” By acknowledging that knowledge isn’t just achieved through higher level schooling, formal education, or limited to scholars and students, the world is able to appreciate blue-collar workers and understand that the “formal” intelligence is not the only type of intelligence people of this world have to offer. To offer the full range of educational opportunities to all social classes, scholars and intellectuals must acknowledge “everyday cognition,” such as: using memory strategies to take order in a diner, managing the flow of customer/employee satisfaction, or developing new strategies to make work more effective, which rejects the normal “Generalizations about intelligence, work, and social class [that] deeply affect our assumptions about ourselves and each
Know what you don’t know - “a manager must realize that there are some categories of things they know, and some they don’t.” pg. 25
Reluctant at first to be the one doing the research, Ehrenreich finally capitulates and begins life as a minimum wage worker in America. The main idea of her experiment was to spend one month in each place and make enough to pay the second month’s rent (p.5-6). She wonders if she will find some special techniques that the poor use to get by. She finds that there are no secret economies, people just do the best they can with what they have available.
Ehrenreich applies at many hotels and supermarkets many paying around 6 dollars and some cents (919). She was called for an interview at the Winn-Dixie where she is sent to take a series of questionnaires and lab test to be considered for the stocking position. She describes the room as,” large room decorated with posters illustrated how to dress professional” (919). Unfortunately, what they offer is not enough to cover for expenses such as rent and groceries. To accommodate with the circumstances, she was forced to limit the amount of money spent on food narrowing her options and preferences,” I lunch at Wendy’s, where $4.99 gets you unlimited refills at the Mexican part of the Super-Bar, a comforting surfeit of refried beans and cheese sauce” (919). She mentions “Chemically Fascist America” (919) to portray how difficult it is to obtain a job. After weeks of applying at many different hotel branches and being told, “nobody lasts more than a couple of weeks” (920) she finally gets employed at The Hearthside where she was interviewed by the manager Phillip who very eagerly instructs her to show up for her first day of training the day after the
In the article Your Local News, Barbara Ehrenreich provides her personal and professional insights into outsourcing, starting with a newspaper in California that has begun outsourcing the writing of even some of its local stories. In the article The Rise of the Rest, Fareed Zakaria looks back on history to see how we arrived at globalizing and he examines the present through myriad examples and data to then consider the globalized future with “the rise of the rest.” Zakaria’s article better helps understand Ehrenreich’s insight about outsourcing. With the help of Zakaria we better understand Ehrenreich’s outlook of outsourcing.
Barbara Ehrenreich moves to Key West, Florida, a place she selected out of laziness and because it is close to home. By this time in her journey, she realizes that the life of a low-wage worker is always going to be difficult, especially in places where the cost of living is incredibly high and the pay is low. At first, she tries to find a place to live, specifically a trailer home, but at the price of $675 a month it is not within her $500-600 budget. Even the poorest of neighborhoods are more than expected, Ehrenreich decides on a $500.00 trailer home that is quite some way away from her work. The thing that Ehrenreich has that not many others do is a matter of transportation, this allows her to make the drive that is a little under an hour.
Barbara Ehrenreich chooses to write in a first person perspective and tends to talk to the reader as if she is an an old friend using language that is clear and using language that is understandable and rarely uses big words. The footnotes the author includes also are easy for the reader to comprehend. The author experiences each job first hand but the data collected is not portrayed in a report like manner. She tends to ignore specific details like the setting, personal features, or the time of day. As I read the first part of the book I realized that Barbara Ehrenreich focuses on her feelings and leaves out details that cannot relate to the way the low wage lifestyle make her feel. Even though her experience seems to be a long one, she manages to summarize her first low wage job experience in a way that I feel like I could relate to. Even
For instance, Ehrenreich in her novel goes undercover by moving across the country and willingly attempts waitressing, being a hotel maid, house
Barbara Ehrenreich was born in 1941, in Butte, Montana, with a father who worked as a miner. Ehrenreich attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon where she studied chemistry and physics. Her studies in physics led her to Rockefeller University, where she changed her studies to cell biology and eventually earned a Ph.D. in this study. In 1970, due to her pregnancy and childbirth, Ehrenreich began participating in a movement aimed to increase available health care information and the status of women’s health care. Due to this involvement, Ehrenreich and her companion Deirdre English wrote Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, which was a small book describing the trials women experienced concerning health care and explaining the reasons behind these issues. Because of her interest