Social Analysis Of Nickel And Dimed By Barbara Ehrenreich

Kaitlyn Imada
“Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book “Nickel and Dimed” a social experiment of the greatest magnitude is taken underway. The journalist is Ehrenreich herself and the experiment was about a woman, who was recently removed from welfare, would survive on a six to seven dollar hourly wage. In addition to this experiment, Ehrenreich promised herself that she would never use her college degree to land a job, always take the highest paying job if offered to her, and find the cheapest living conditions to accommodate herself with. While immersed in her ‘experiment’ Ehrenreich ends up travelling to Florida, Maine, and Minnesota looking for jobs and places to live on a minimum wage salary. Ultimately

In many communities across our country, mainly vacation or resort locales, a lack of affordable housing is seen. As a result, workers must drive around thirty miles out of town to find an apartment cheap enough to support their low wage earnings. Since low-wage earners usually have a lack of savings, they are unable to put down money in advance for a cheap apartment. For instance, Ehrenreich explains that “If you can't put up the two months' rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week.” (Ehrenreich 27). Ehrenreich ended up facing the physical toll of handling two jobs at one just to provide for the needs of basic survival. This can be seen as an important issue within our society because workers need to have access to affordable housing otherwise they will get restless and move somewhere closer to their current housing. Not only will this decrease the number of staff on hand for certain locations, the issue of no affordable housing will eventually put people out onto the streets. Our society constantly puts forward the need to make money off of high prices, instead of helping those with little to no money. An unchecked issue like this would grow into something far worse which at the time would be very difficult to handle. The notion of taking two or more jobs at the same time just

Ehrenreich states “…the United States, for all its wealth, leaves its citizens to fend for themselves — facing market-based rents, for example, on their wages alone. For millions of Americans, that $10 — or even $8 or $6 — hourly wage is all there is.” (Ehrenreich 214) A large portion of us human beings in society today, only care about making money to benefit ourselves rather than those less fortunate. People who have worked their entire lives on low wages may never experience luxuriousness due to the greed of our employers and government. Those graced with a generous amount of money tend to leave others in need of assistance, thusly causing inhuman nature to develop within our communities. Ehrenreich experiences this when she found out that her own self-esteem lowered at the hands of her employers who treated their workers as disposable. These employers as well as their companies, devalue a worker to essentially keep them powerless against them. Many of the job interviews she had gone through avoided any discussion of wages because, the employers wanted to keep the paychecks at a bare minimum. In most situations within our community workplace, a worker is not compensated correctly for his or her labor. Most of the human beings today would do just anything to stay wealthy, even if it means devaluing another. Most of our society spends their lifetimes