Nickel and Dimed On (not) Getting By in America by Ehrenreich
In the book Nickel and Dimed On (not) Getting By in America the author Ehrenreich, goes under cover as a minimum wage worker. Ehrenreich’s primary reason for seriptiously getting low paying jobs is to see if she can “match income to expenses as the truly poor attempt to do everyday.”(Ehrenreich 6) Also Ehrenreich makes it extremely clear that her work was not designed to make her “experience poverty.”(6) After completing the assignment, given to her by an editor, she had planned to write an article about her experience. Her article purpose intended to reach the community that is financially well off and give them an idea how minimum wage workers deal with everyday life. It also illustrated to the Economist of the harsh reality in the ultra-competitive job environment and how some one in a low paying career cannot survive. Ehrenreich’s motives gave her the tools to experience poverty from a statistical standpoint, but kept her from experiencing the problems poor people face everyday in life. The insight to the fact that maybe a person on welfare needs to be there not because they do not work hard enough but because the way society is setup they are going to be doomed to from the beginning. For example, her personal experiences described gives the reader knowledge that unless you are “Superman” you can almost never work enough to get ahead in life, and you would not have enough time to “go to college” to gain the education for a higher paying job. The first person point-of-view personalizes the book and that allowed me to be drawn into the storyline and plot completely. Some ways she handled situations angered me. 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 a 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 the workers can get a higher hourly wage. Her downfall in Minneapolis is when she can’t find affordable lodging. Ehrenreich stayed in hotels which become very expensive. The accommodations in these hotels proved to be almost inhabitable. The rooms were small, most had no air conditioning. The windows had no screens so they could not be left open to...
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...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.
Reading Nickel and Dimed, enlightened me to see how some people have to live. The idea behind writing the book provided an interesting look into poverty, however, Ehrenreich did not offer any real solution to the problem at hand. Ehrenreich made the assumption that all persons working these low paying positions are uneducated, unskilled, and just off of welfare. Which this is not entirely true a lot of these courageous people have some education if not college degrees. In the book I believe some people are richer in their families with love and respect that the highest paying careers could not satisfy. Material items are not as important to a great deal of the population. As long as their loved ones have a roof over their head, food on the table and clothes to wear the rest is just icing. I know people who have fortune in their bank accounts and they are some of the poorest individuals you could ever meet.
Works Cited
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed. New York: Henry Holt, 2001.
Nickel And Dimed: Occupations Barbara Ehrenreich provides evidence in “Nickel and Dimed” that she’s an outstanding author with this book. Its engaging and compelling, no question about that. But it’s hard to get from side to side at times since of the authors attitudes. Her key summit is to carry concentration to the scrape of the working deprived, but she manages to be both abusive and divisive. Occupation on attacking our industrialist system, she fails to become aware of that the endurance of upper classes seems to be what motivates the poor, fairly than what dispirits them. She blames capitalism for the injustices of the world, slightly than easy bad management techniques. A company should be shown that would benefit from a union and it will be shown to all around that one that will promote even better from decent, gentle management decisions. Most irritating, she’s constantly negative about the whole lot, even the positive experiences she has. When one of her colleagues offers to allow her move in with her and her family, not only does Ehrenreich turn the propose down, but she still describes it sneeringly as a "touched by an angel moment." Does she have to dribble with irony yet when writing about an authentically type deed? She condemns "visible Christians," any and all organization, yuppies, anybody who hires and consequently exploits maids, welfare reform, and still tosses in a prod at people who study John Grisham. Is there someone she likes? Her logic is troublesome as well. She begins her research to see if the functioning poor have some financial endurance tactics that the center class don’t know regarding, and decides at the conclusion that no, they don’t, as if admitting that this would signify the poor are imp...
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 use of rhetoric (ethos, pathos, logos), she is very effective at portraying pathos, trying to get us to understand why we should care about a social situation such as this through, credibility, emotion, and logic.
The author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich, began her experiment in Key West because she lived near there. Then she moved to Portland, ME since it was mostly white. She finished her investigation in Minnesota, where she thought there would be a pleasant stability between rent and wages. From the beginning, she ruled out high profile cities as a result of the high-rent and the lacking amount of jobs. As a secretive journalist, she related the near poverty experience to a life long ago when she was a child or raising her own children, as a result she endured the crushing feeling of anxiety. She knew she had a home to return to and her savings to fall back on therefore, the feeling of anxiety would not be experienced
In the novel Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehnreich, there are many hurtles she must overcome to experience the life of a low income worker. She sets some ground rules for herself, such as always having a car, and starting out with a certain amount of money for her down payment on an apartment. Although the rules are doable, she admits that she broke all of the rules at least once. Even though Barbara didn't hold to her original plan, she was still able to reveal her appeals clearly.
She puts herself in the mindset of many women in her position by getting a job as a waitress, getting a small apartment, and working minimum wage to get by day to day. Ehrenreich’s states, her main goal is “to lift poor women out of poverty as well as raise their self-esteem.” (p. 224.) This is a powerful statement Ehrenreich makes because she is not doing this for the sake of experimenting she honestly wants to make a difference in American women lives. The story shows Ehrenreich’s experience as working as minimum waitress in Hearthside as well as describing her coworkers and their
In Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, the author frequently focuses on the demeanor and appearance of the people she meets and sees during her research trips. Throughout the book she makes witty, opinionated comments that can easily be taken out of context. Because of this, her wisecracks convey the impression of her being narrow-minded. Also, these comments do not help her with any of her arguments because of how she comes off. Ehrenreich improper use of humor puts across the impression of her being biased.
Ehrenriech noticed in the restaurant business that those who cannot speak English are the ones who usually work in the kitchens, working at below minimum wage. Immigrants are usually the ones who are affected by this because they don’t know the laws of this country. All they know is that they can possibly work their way up socially, from the bottom to the top. To give these people an actual chance of climbing up the social ladder, the government should do something to stop managers of stores from cheating the workers out of benefits and wages.
The juxtaposed contrasts that she often uses are seen explicitly in anecdotes or implicitly in conscious thoughts. Such contrasts first appear in the first paragraph. Even before Ehrenreich makes any substantial effort to join the poor working class, she is hit with this sudden unease of being recognized. At that time, it is clear that she has not relinquished her middle class status since she feels ashamed of being identified as a poor worker. In the world that the author originally belongs to, name and reputation are considered important to one’s standing in society yet in the working class realm, as Ehrenreich later finds out, one is often “unnoticed” and names are “unuttered.” Not only are names forgotten but one’s ability and education are also ignored when looking for jobs. Oblivious to the “rule” for hiring for unskilled jobs, Ehrenreich initially worries about her over-qualification but only to be shocked when she realizes the employers are not even interested. Whereas jobs for the middle class often demand higher education and past accomplishments, jobs for the low-wage workforce are simply depended simply on luck or as Ehrenreich claims “ being in the right place at the right time.” One can convey this as part of a corporate scheme to ensure the
Ehrenreich notices how troublesome a minimum wage workers life is by her pretending to be a minimum wage worker as well. A strength of Ehrenreich's argument is that she was able to show examples of how some of her coworkers lived poorly. An example that she gives is, “Gail is sharing a room in a well-known downtown flophouse for $250 a week. Her roommate,a male friend, has begun hitting on her, driving her nuts,but the rent would be impossible alone.” (25). Some of her coworkers had to go through tedious situations as can't get out of them because they can't afford to live on their own. This shows a strength in Ehrenreich's argument because it give more credibility. Another strength in her argument is she went to go experience low wage work first-hand. She said, “Maybe when I got into the project, I would discover some hidden economies in the world of the low-wage worker” (3). Ehrenreich realized that the only way that she was going to get the answer was by doing the job for herself even though she didn't want to at first. By her experiencing this first-hand she is able to strengthen the argument because she will be able to effectively convey her message. If someone else were to conduct the experiment then there would have probably been a lot more holes throughout the
During the middle of the book, Ehrenreich writes, "Maybe, it occurs to me, that I 'm getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black (p. 100)." I found this interesting because African Americans continuously face inequality due to race, which correlates with the inequalities that lower classes in society face. Throughout Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich emphasizes that there are "hidden costs" to being poor, which includes those in poverty who cannot find a way out. The working poor, who Ehrenreich gets to know through work, live in hotels paying daily. These people in the book describe to Ehrenreich that that would rent an apartment, but they cannot afford the security deposit and starting costs. The working poor in the book also must buy unhealthy meals at fast-food restaurants because they cannot afford kitchen appliances or food to cook with. People suffering in poverty often believe they are stuck there and cannot get out, so they
Throughout the world, most people believe in some type of god or gods, and the majority of them understand God as all-good, all-knowing (omniscient), and all-powerful (omnipotent). However, there is a major objection to the latter belief: the “problem of evil” (P.O.E.) argument. According to this theory, God’s existence is unlikely, if not illogical, because a good, omniscient, and omnipotent being would not allow unnecessary suffering, of which there are enormous amounts.
The logical problem of evil states that the existence of God is logically incompatible with the existence
A strong argument against the existence of a Christian God is contained in the theodicy problem. The existence of suffering is not compatible with an omniscient, omnipotent, omni benevolent superior being. An all-knowing being would be aware that suffering is and always will be in existence; an all-powerful being would be able to prevent suffering; and a perfectly good being would desire to end suffering. Many Christian thinkers have sought to justify this contradiction, and one of the most common counterarguments to the theodicy problem is contained in the free-will defense. Through interpretations of St. Augustine, J.L. Mackie, and David Hume's arguments in reference to the God and evil problem, the problems inherent in the argument will support the assertion that the Christian God cannot exist; the definition must be altered.
Before I begin going through these philosopher’s solutions it’s important to understand first why they believed evil was a problem. The problem of evil has been commonly regarded as the main argument for atheism. The argument stems from the logic that if God is a perfect being and created everything; how can evil exist? The atheist will try and argue that God and evil are incompatible with one another which as a result must mean that God cannot exist since evil does. (Murray). However, if we conclude that God does exist then how does a perfect being who has the power to create everything in the universe, then why has this God created evil? Is it possible that God could potentially be the author of evil? These questions set the stage for our philosophers to propose potential solutions to why an all-powerful God could create or allow evil to exist in our world. Leibniz has two potential solutions to these questions that he classifies as the Holiness Problem and the Underachiever Problem (Murray).
This bank belonged to your paternal grandmother’s parents, William and Clara Swanson. According to my Internet research, it may have some monetary value. However, the prices that I’m seeing are of a wide range. William Tell deposits the coins in the bank by shoot an apple off his sons head. My mother, I, both of you girls, and Jasmine and Savannah have played with this bank.