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Essay on poor family
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The movie Waging a living has many Interesting things it tells us about.In the movie there are four main characters.Jerry is a security guard that lives in San Francisco and makes 12 dollars an hours.Barbara has five and makes 8.25/hour she gets food stamps,medicaid,child care,and subsides.Mary is waitress, she has three kids and just recently got divorced and a year later she got with a new man.Jean is a CNA has a sick daughter that has four kids of her own that all live with her and she is divorced.The movie has a good purpose the audience is people that are not poor,the documentary was effective to a point.
Purpose of the movie is to show the struggle of the poor and what they have to go through.In Waging a living Barbara has five kids and she gets a lot of help from the government in food stamps and Medicaid and things such as that. Waging a living has a person like Barbara that tries to get out of where she is at but every time she starts to make more they
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She was just living on here own, then her daughter got sick is going to die, so she has to help pay for her bills and help take care of her children;she ends up in a very tough spot which Is real thing that can happen to anyone at any time.Documentaries really try to connect with the audience to help with the effectiveness of the movie.This movie using all the character like Jerry, Barbara, Mary and Jean to relate to all types of lifestyles to make this movie effective.Something major in this that take away from the effectiveness is the facts they use in this movie is the facts they use. Waging a War says “only 37% of single moms get child support”.Everything in Waging a war is neither true or in made up in the
To the urban lifestyle of growing up in the ghettos and the hardships. She depicts the usages of drugs, gang, crime, poverty, teen pregnancy and mostly how it effects the community. But also shows how the outside violence comes into the home and can devastate the natural order of the household.
The book Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting by in America, written by Barbara Ehrenreich is a book that relates the experience of how she survived living on poverty-level wages in America as a waitress, maid and a Wal-mart sales associate. Barbara left her comfortable surroundings as a journalist with a Ph.D in biology to work various "unskilled" and "under compensated" jobs in order to achieve, "the old-fashioned kind of journalism". In regards to leaving her comfortable lifestyles for a few months traveling through Florida to Maine and Minnesota, she discovered that people who are paid six to seven dollars an hour did not generate enough income for those who did not want to live outside of a home. The sad reality is that millions of people in America work everyday for those wages and have to just deal with it. The majority opinion is that some poor people are lazy or choose to be that way, when the truth is that individuals work everyday some even two jobs and still cannot make ends meet because of the poverty cycle.
However, she never really experienced the actual life of living in poverty as the majority of people living in poverty experience. Barbara, an educated white women had just that on other people living in poverty, because of the color of her skin and education level that is more often than not restricted from people living in poverty. She was able and more qualified for jobs than other people living amongst the status she was playing. She also was able to more readily seek better benefits than people living in poverty. When she first start her journey in Florida she had a car, a car that in most cases people living in poverty do not have. She was also able to use the internet to find local jobs and available housing in the area that many people living in poverty are restricted from. Another great benefit she had was the luxury of affording a drug detox cleansing her of drugs deemed bad. Many people living in poverty do not have much extra cash laying around much less fifty dollars to afford a detox for prescription drugs. She also had the luxury to afford her prescription drugs, another option that many people living in poverty do not have. Another element that made Barbara’s experience not that genuine was the fact that she was not providing for anybody other than herself. Twenty-two percent of kids under the age of 18 are living below the poverty line (http://npc.umich.edu/poverty/#5) , Barbara did not have to provide for pets or kids which would of changed her experience altogether of living in poverty. Not to belittle Barbara’s experience, but many factors of what life is like living in poverty were not taken into consideration during her
Since the summer of my senior year in high school, I was confused about the meaning of learning. What do I want to learn, and what could I do with my bachelor degree? So far, it has been two years. I still could not tell the answer to the first question, but, progressively, I know that I could do nothing with my bachelor degree and even with the higher degrees. On the other hand, the knowledge I learned so far is the thing I could rely. However, in some people’s points of view, this is unpractical. For such a long time, I have found few individuals sharing the similar ideas with me. Once, I saw a celebrity, who graduated from Tsinghua University, having a show online. He said that he was extremely disappointed when a college student, who also studies at Tsinghua University, ask him about whether he should take the examination of the public servant or not. From his point of view, as a part of Tsinghua University, one of the best universities in China, how could such a smart student is satisfied with basic needs, rather than cultivating himself. According to my experience, there are lots of people around me are pursuing material benefits. Self-cultivation, thus, is less important.
shows an African-American family struggling to get out of the poverty line, which is stopping them
The Frontline documentary “Two American Families” produced by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), portrays the life of two typical middle class families living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Frontline Video, 2013). This follows the life of the Neumann family and the Stanley family as they pursue the ideal type of life, The American Dream, from 1991 through 2011 (Frontline Video, 2013). However, the pursuit of their fantasy quickly turned into a fight for economic struggle (Frontline Video, 2013). These struggles were all brought about by the new shaping economy (Frontline Video, 2013). At the beginning of the documentary, the Neumann family seemed well put together (Frontline Video, 2013).
At one point in her career, Barbara Ehrenreich thought that it would be a good idea to get into the life of a person who works for the minimum wage and tries to live of it. As she went through her quest, Barbara met many people who were in fact, struggling. Unlike her, these people had to work multiple jobs, cut down their eating, live in terrible places, and just suffer all because of the lack of money and the need for as much of it as the could get. Some of these employees had others that they had to support, and some only needed to provide for themselves. Nonetheless, millions of people across the US are forced to work jobs where they are miserable in order to be able to give their families what they need, no matter what they have to give up in order to do so. Some of the people she meets are very similar to the characters in George Saunders’ story Pastoralia in the terms that they too work hard, don’t get the best treatment, and are only working because of their need to provide and sustain themselves and others. Saunders subtly depicts his characters as minimum wage workers, much like those in real life, who are struggling to give their loved ones what they need.
Throughout Society, many families have seen struggle and lived through poverty. The economy is not always thriving which takes a toll on people who suffer through unemployment or low wage jobs. The Frontline documentary, “Two American Families”, is the perfect example of struggle in the United States. It shows the lives of two struggling families and their efforts to survive. Two essays, “The Sociological Imagination” by C. Wright Mills, and “The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All” by Herbert J. Hans, support the analysis of the video strongly. They express many ideas that relate to the world and struggle throughout society. Also, there are many sociological terms that depict the events that occurred in the documentary.
The second issue that I identified, relates to autonomy or self-determination. I struggled with labelling this fundamental concept in the social work discipline. My first blatant encounter with this issue occurred during the week of September 14th while I was attending a vigil. The patient was actively dying and requested that his spouse turn on the television. Initially she refused, she feared that it would agitate him and prevent him from resting. Since the patient was diagnosed with cancer rather than dementia, I felt that he was aware of what he was asking for and knew what he wanted. I directed by questions towards his spouse, because I did not want her to feel like I was trying to override her rules. I asked her if he normally watches
Growing up living paycheck to paycheck is a lifestyle that I haven’t experienced but came pretty close to it. Growing up on the north side of Amarillo is something I will never forget. My family and I weren’t poor, because my father worked his tail off to make sure that our family had everything we needed, and a couple of things here and there, while mom was trying to finish up school to be a nurse. The neighborhood was not an ideal place to raise kids. There were restless nights were I would wake up to the sound of gunshots and screams not knowing what was going on. We constantly had stuff stolen from our property, from bicycles to garden decorations.
Viktor E. Frankl wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning. In this book he describes how life was in a conservation camp. He wrote about many horrible acts that has happened to him and his fellow prisoners. I have not experienced these horrible things in the same sort of way, but I have experienced them in my own life if different situations. I have selected four quotes from his book that have meaning to myself.
This film was written and produced in the middle of the Great Depression, and the depiction of the poverty and unemployment is very evident throughout the entire film.
As discussed above, scholars’ attitudes towards self-determination correlate with their understanding about the link between self-determination and democracy. Intrinsically linked with the idea of democracy, self-determination was to correct the arbitrariness and injustices of dynastic rule. In theory, self-determination could be said to refer to the practice by which individuals freely express their political will by choosing their own government and, at this stage, a reference to nationalism appears by no means necessary. The problem arises when the principle of self-determination is put into practice (xxx, xxx).
“Self-discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you do not control what you think, you cannot control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.”
Everyone 's goal in life is to make sure they live a meaningful life, it 's what makes people motivated and how they rate themselves. We all run into this quandary which has challenged philosophers, scientists, and a numerous amount of other people. ‘How do we live a full and meaningful life?’ No one has entirely figured out how to live a meaningful life, but there are several key points researchers have found that help people find their meaning and satisfaction in life. We need to know what 's important to us, pursue our passion, discover our life 's purpose, spend more on people than things, express ourselves and have courage, prioritize human connection with others, and know meaning and happiness