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Women in the age of welfare reform
Nickel and Dimed Book Reviews
Nickel and Dimed Book Reviews
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Recommended: Women in the age of welfare reform
Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Barbara Ehrenreich is a political/social journalist and writer. She is a best-selling author with a dozen book credits to her name. Her works include Blood Rites, The Worst Years of Our Lives, and Fear of Falling. She also has written articles for Time, Harpers, The New Republic, The Nation, and The New York Time Magazine. Her Ph.D. in biology endows her with the experience and discipline to approach as a scientific experiment the study resulting in her newest book, Nickel and Dimed.
Light years removed from the kind of life she would eventually enter and write about, the genesis of the book happened during an expensive luncheon meeting with a magazine editor. As the conversation topic drifted, Ehrenreich casually wondered how people get by on the low wages of the “unskilled.” “Someone ought to do the old fashioned kind of journalism...go out there and try it for themselves,” she exhorted. She didn’t really have herself in mind, but her editor challenged her with a single word, “You.”
The idea also came in the wake of sweeping welfare reform in 1996, which moved roughly four million women from the welfare rolls and into the workforce. The study Ehrenreich undertook then was to see how she could manage economically in the low wage work pool in which many such women found themselves.
To prepare for the project, Ehrenreich set up some ground rules. When looking for work she would not fall back on the use of her usual skills as a writer, and she would take the highest paying job while at the same time seek the least expensive housing that still offered privacy and safety.
Admittedly, she recognized the advantages she possessed -- good hea...
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...ess, Ehrenreich’s book has received some criticism for its lack of policy suggestions. She does not offer concrete ideas on how to remedy this situation. Some also said she did not avail herself of the aide that is available.
However, the reality is that those who need help aren’t magically endowed with the knowledge of how to receive it. In Barbara’s appeal for food assistance, it took initiative, seventy minutes of calling, driving, and nearly $3 spent in phone calls, which resulted in about $7 worth of food. In California, many of the working poor are made up of non-English speakers or those who are working here illegally. These people do not know where to start to get help or are not inclined to seek it for fear of reprisal.
I found the book well written and very eye opening to the struggles faced by millions of women - and men - in the United States.
Ehrenreich then attends a career “boot camp” in which people are trained in how to become more effective and more employable...
There are several inconsistencies about the situations that Ehrenreich placed herself in and the real li...
Economic inequality and injustice come in the same hand. Poor people are more likely to experience inequality and injustice. The negative assumptions of poor people are created by the media and politicians. Promoting economic justice by offering people living in poverty some form of social support. Barbara Ehrenreich found in her experiment the workforce for low-wage was difficult. Conley talks about the different types of social inequalities and how they have been unsuccessful.
One of them being the aunt of a friend of Ehrenreich’s named Caroline. Caroline went through a real-life version of the hypothetical situation Ehrenreich created for herself for the experiment. At first Caroline had a good job and lived in New Jersey with her husband and kids, until she decided to leave her husband and move into her mother’s home with her kids in tow. She then moved to Florida when transportation to her job became too difficult for her to manage. In Florida, she got a job at a hotel cleaning rooms as well as the news that she had diabetes. It was also in Florida that Caroline eventually met a man who she got married to, this marriage, however, didn’t end her any troubles as she still has a low-paying job and children that she must take care of. It is these types of people that Ehrenreich encounters during her experiment. People who have experienced the middle-class lifestyle in the past and are now forced to join the working-class. Families who, although employed, are at the brink of scarcity and debt because of their extremely low wages. Since the audience is most likely part of the middle-class themselves, the reading of others’ very similar experiences can cause a feeling of fear to envelop within them, emphasizing the hardship that many people like Caroline go through in the United States;
In her unforgettable memoir, Barbara Ehrenreich sets out to explore the lives of the working poor under the proposed welfare reforms in her hometown, Key West, Florida. Temporarily discarding her middle class status, she resides in a small cheap cabin located in a swampy background that is forty-five minutes from work, dines at fast food restaurants, and searches all over the city for a job. This heart-wrenching yet infuriating account of hers reveals the struggles that the low-income workers have to face just to survive. In the except from Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich uses many rhetorical strategies to illustrate the conditions of the low wage workers including personal anecdotes of humiliation at interviews, lists of restrictions due to limited
The biggest appeal that Ehrenreich makes is after she ends up walking out of the housekeeping job/waitress job because she cannot handle it anymore." I have failed I don't cry, but I am in a position to realize, for the first time in many years, that the tear ducts are still there and still capable of doing their job." (Ehrenreich, 48) This is the biggest appeal because Ehrenreich is quitting on the whole project. She is basically telling the readers that it is impossible for her, a "well-off", woman to live the life of a low wage worker.
I believe Ehrenreich went through several terms in the textbook of Job stress, pay, security, dignity, and bullying. It's not just Barbara's novel, but everywhere which affects people all the time. Having all these traits in a job are what people think about, desire good pay, and want success in their job. Also, job satisfaction is indicating a lot in the book of her job's positive and negative outcomes. Ehrenreich did not find a certain job favorable, but she made the most of them to get paid, pay for rent, and bills.
I learned a lot from this book. I learned a lot about why some stores are structured the way they are and how race, class, and gender are deeply imbedded in everything in the world and in everything we do. There is nothing we do that does not involve at least one of these aspects.
Should we have the minimum wage rise? Nowadays, many people argue that we should increase the minimum wage because we haven’t had an increase since 2009. People who are living on the minimum wage struggle a lot raising their families. (Webster) Minimum wage means the lowest daily or monthly remuneration that employers may legally pay to workers. On the other hand living wage means the minimum amount that a worker must earn to afford his/her basic necessities, without public or private assistance
Like most people whom conduct experiments, Ehrenreich must first establish credibility of her knowledge of this subject. She does this in her introduction in numerous ways. Ehrenreich comes out saying that she has a Ph.D in biology but has a fancy for writing. She starts off with her exposure to low wage paying jobs by using her sister and her husband a companion for over a decade. Her sister, who use to work for the phone company as a sales representative, a factory work and receptionist who described it her experiences as “the hopelessness of being a wage slave”. Her husband use to work for $4.50 an hour in a warehouse before he was fortunate enough to land a good paying job with the union workers the Teamsters.
In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler tells the story of a handful of people he has interviewed and followed through their struggles with poverty over the course of six years. David Shipler is an accomplished writer and consultant on social issues. His knowledge, experience, and extensive field work is authoritative and trustworthy. Shipler describes a vicious cycle of low paying jobs, health issues, abuse, addiction, and other factors that all combine to create a mountain of adversity that is virtually impossible to overcome. The American dream and promise of prosperity through hard work fails to deliver to the 35 million people in America who make up the working poor. Since there is neither one problem nor one solution to poverty, Shipler connects all of the issues together to show how they escalate each other. Poor children are abused, drugs and gangs run rampant in the poor neighborhoods, low wage dead end jobs, immigrants are exploited, high interest loans and credit cards entice people in times of crisis and unhealthy diets and lack of health care cause a multitude of problems. The only way that we can begin to see positive change is through a community approach joining the poverty stricken individuals, community, businesses, and government to band together to make a commitment to improve all areas that need help.
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
In today’s society, the question of minimum wage is a large political topic. Many people argue that it is impossible to live on a minimum wage lifestyle. In her novel Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich looks into this issue. In an experiment in which she mimics the life of a single woman, she moves into the low-wage workforce in three different cities in America. Within these cities, she attempts to make a living off of low-wage work and records her experiences, as well as the experiences of the true low-wage workers around her. Throughout Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich utilizes both vivid imagery and data in order to persuade the audience to agree that the low-wage lifestyle is truly un-livable.
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 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 that the workers can get a higher hourly wage. Her downfall in Minneapolis is when she can’t find affordable lodging.
Alice Walkers “Everyday Use”, is a story about a family of African Americans that are faced with moral issues involving what true inheritance is and who deserves it. Two sisters and two hand stitched quilts become the center of focus for this short story. Walker paints for us the most vivid representation through a third person perspective of family values and how people from the same environment and upbringing can become different types of people.