Do you ever wonder why do we work for a living? Why we spend all of our childhood and years as a young adult training our mind and body for our future workforce? Do we do it for money? For love maybe Or do we do it because we have no other choice? In the first sentence of "Why do we work" By Andrew Curry, the author states as an option that we work because we have to. I strongly disagree with that statement and here 's why. My entire life I have been told that you need to do certain things growing up in order to be successful. We are brainwashed by these words "You need to" constantly and it scares people from taking a different …show more content…
For example I could be offered the opportunity to get the job I always dreamed of but then I decline because the fear of not doing what I needed to do like finish school haunts my brain. The reason why that can be a problem is because even though I know I would do extremely well at my job there is always the fear of something going wrong and then I 'd have no other type of work due to the fact of not finishing school. Another example would be missing a family members wedding because I still needed work to be done. It 's always the precious moments that always get shot down due to the fact that people are constantly told they need to do this or that and they listen and continue to miss every single moment or opportunity in their life that could change them …show more content…
One of the facts of modern life is that a relatively small class of people works very long hours and earns good money for its efforts. Nearly a third of college-educated American men, for example, work more than 50 hours a week. Some professionals do twice that amount, and elite lawyers can easily work 70 hours a week almost every week of the year." What I see from this is nothing more than people only working long hours to receive good pay. That doesn’t mean they enjoy what they’re doing and for me I 'd rather be happy working and making decent pay then work stressful long hours and be unhappy just to receive a bigger
In today’s society you either have to work hard to live a good life, or just inherit a lump sum of cash, which is probably never going to happen. So instead a person has to work a usual nine to five just to put food on the table for their families, and in many cases that is not even enough. In the article, “Why We Work” by Andrew Curry, Curry examines the complexities of work and touches on the reasons why many workers feel unsatisfied with their jobs. Barbara Ehrenreich writes an essay called, “Serving in Florida” which is about the overlooked life of being a server and the struggles of working off low minimum wages. Curry’s standpoint on jobs is that workers are not satisfied, the job takes control of their whole life, and workers spend
Why should we be the ones to pay for someone to sit around at home? The answer is one simple word, welfare. There are many reasons why people mooch on welfare, rather than going out and working. The only jobs these people are qualified for are minimum wage jobs. As Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, worked at minimum wage paying jobs and reported the hardships that people had to go through on a day-to-day basis. A critic responded by saying, “This is simply the case of an academic who is forced to get a real job…” Ehrenriech’s reasoning for joining the working-class is to report why people who mite be on welfare, continue to stay on welfare. Her reports show there are many hardships that go along with minimum waged jobs, in the areas of drug abuse, fatigue, the idea of invisibility, education and the American Dream.
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
The author intended audience are the companies that employed low-wage workers, therefore, the intended audience to modified the payment of each individual that has sacrifice each second of their time. One of the assumptions that the author believes is the fact that companies itself has not acknowledged the efforts of each employ. Barbara assumes that not everyone in our society has even cared about employees feeling or about their lives. Everything we see around us are made by humans who had to sacrifice everything in order for us to basically live in and own it. Ehrenreich considers the target audience as ignorant, unappreciated, and ungrateful for the employees that work for each company within our nation, more likely make up most of the
People will argue that having a low-paying job and freedom is better than a high-paying job and a 60-hour workweek. However many including myself, don’t share the views of Hal Niedzviecki’s essay’s “Stupid Jobs Are Good to Relax With”. Having a higher paying and longer hours provides much more income and allows for a lot more financial freedom. This freedom can help bring much more happiness into your life compared to the lower paying workweek. Hal Niedzviecki mentions many benefits to the easy jobs with low-paying workweeks in the following statement
Pope Paul VI once said “All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly strive to avoid is the major building block to the person we are today”. This quote means that people who are given good lives and good money take it for granted. They don’t care about what kind of money they get and don’t care in life, yet people who don’t have much money, but work hard to get there, enjoy and admire life much more. The convincing evidence is in the article it states, “ It seems like were always searching for something to satisfy us, and never finding it. Maybe if we could lose our cool we could.” Although one could argue that the Socs have it hard because of lack of support, Greasers have more
The worker comes to believe that the maintenance of individual existence is thus the single and solitary goal of their life activity.” He believes that if a worker works only for the wage then he deprives himself of purpose in life. In turn, he implies that labor is the only way to affirm one’s purpose in life. Life is about the mindset each person carries. It is possible that one could work a job simply for the wage. However, that does not to mean that they have to lack self-actualization. One could be working a job that they don’t completely enjoy but realize they have found purpose in providing for their family. To be able to provide for their family and create happiness within them, is all it takes for some. The means of production in a capitalist economy does not inevitably lead to alienation. Others may work a job solely for the wage but find purpose in non-economic activities. For example, people could find their purpose in the church, playing a sport, tutoring children, and more. Your job doesn’t have to define your meaning in
In Ain’t No Making It, Jay Macleod explains his theories and findings on social reproduction of inequality. He begins by telling us more about some authors and their theories. This helped me have a better understanding on what this book is really trying to portray. One author I found interesting was Bernstein who focused on language patterns and social reproduction. By bringing up issues like this one that most people usually don’t think about, I was able to look at the problems that the Brothers and Hallway Hangers faced from a whole new perspective. I would not have noticed this throughout the book if these issues were not mentioned right away. I come from a very traditional family that believes that success depends on how much work you
When I was growing up, I often reflected on what my chances of success would be later on in life. I always wondered if I would have the same opportunity to make as much money as top richest 1 percent of Americans who hold 34 percent of the total national wealth.(Mantsios 284) These were the rich and successful people I had seen in movies or on television that made billions of dollars a year. I was raised in a middle class family and my parents from the beginning did everything in their power they could to provide me with an opportunity for success. My father, who came from a lower class family, dropped out of college after his sophomore year and began working in construction. When my mother became pregnant with me, my dad decided he would launch his own construction business. I have witnessed first hand how hard he works each day to make the living he does, working from dawn till dusk, 6 days a week. My father is good at what he does but in contrast to the top one percent of Americans, his annual salary (along with the other 99 percent’s) is incomparable pocket change to them. Although my father began with nothing and was able to work his way up and out of the class he began in I still wondered why he was not able to make as much, or even half, in a lifetime as some elite Americans make in a month. It seemed crazy to me that the majority of wealth in America is concentrated within a group of a few, elite Americans that make hundreds of times more than what the rest of the country’s citizens do. I began to ponder the questions: Does everyone in America have an equal opportunity to succeed?...If not, then why? Do the other 99 percent not work hard enough?. I whole-heartedly believe that the amount of effort an individual puts int...
...ese, the person doesn’t have to work for anything for they were already born into riches therefore their lives up until they are old will continue to be filled with riches. A prime example of Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton is an American heiress due to her great grandfather being the founder of the Hilton Hotels, which are now a bombing corporation. Being born into such a wealthy family, she found it apropos to take up the opportunity to become anything she wanted such as television personality, businesswoman, fashion designer, model, actress, producer, DJ, author and singer. Not everyone is given the opportunity to become successful heiresses such as Paris Hilton. That is what make the idea of “hard work equals success” very dependent upon natural born talent and opportunity which in turn makes this aspect of the American Dream more realistic rather than romantic.
When the U.S. is compared to the conditions of other workers in other countries the numbers come as quite a shock. According to the magazine Psychology Today, “The United States—one of the richest countries in the world--ranks 28th among advanced nations in the category of work-life balance, 9th from the bottom” (Cummins 1). This stressful imbalance of home life with excessive work hours has left us in desperate need of more time and is becoming a strong identifier of American culture in the world. As Cummins explains, “We log long hours at work with the fear of losing our jobs through downsizing hanging over our heads. Then we fight rush hour traffic to get home in time to be super-parents, putting dinner on the table, helping our kids with their homework, and checking in with friends and family members we feel we have neglected because we are so overwhelmed” (Cummins 1). This well pa...
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
In “Americans Are Overworked, but Still Surprisingly Happy on the Job,” Suzanne Lucas claims that an appropriate amount of work can make workers feel satisfied, but
But as many societies modernized and grew much larger then working class became more educated, gaining specific job skills and achieving the kind of finical well-being jobs Marx would of never thought possible. As we see in today era in the year of 2016, workers are no longer getting exploited. Workers are now working under the protection of a union and a labor law. In a recent, New York Time article published on September 13, 2016, titled "Americans Inequality Problems: Real Income Gains Are Brief and Hard to Find". American 's income increasion was presented. A recent count by the Census Bureau provided good news for a beleaguered set of working class. A typical American working class income had increased by a heavy 5.2 percent in 2015. The first sky high jump since 2007, the year right before the economy had sank into a hard recession. The average income for the poorest population increased by a 6.6 percent after three back to back consecutive years of decline, the American economy has began to lift, the fellow ruse of the minimum wage across many states and municipalities. But what many American 's ask is what "why now why after so many years after the increase of labor income?" The answer to this question has many factors that can imply but one cause was mainly on distribution.Most agreed that the only way Americans were going to make it ahead would be through a paycheck. But the question still stands
..., a person who earns $25,000 is happier than a person who makes $125,000 and an employee who makes $500,000 is only slightly happier than someone who makes $55,000. Lastly, there are more important things in life that and make you happy, for example, friends. They don’t come with a price tag, and if they do, you definitely need new friends. Money won’t make you happy since good times can’t be bought. You don’t need a fancy vacation to have a good time; it’s just a matter of who you spend it with. Over the years, humans have blown the value of money way out of proportion. People make it seem like if you’re not filthy rich, then you won’t live a good life but it’s not true. You can lack money and yet still live a perfect, happy life.