“The combined wealth of the richest 1 percent will overtake that of the other 99 percent of people next year” (oxfam.org). Wealth distribution is a huge problem that the world faces today. There is an enormous gap between the rich and the poor. The gap between the rich and the poor will only increase if actions are not taken to stop it. Jo Goodwin Parker in her essay What is Poverty discusses the living conditions and lack of money to buy simple necessities that make it impossible for the poor to help them out of poverty. In On Dumpster Diving Lars Eighner explains how wasteful those with money are and the negative stereotypes that have been placed on the homeless. The image that we viewed in class depicts the struggle to break free from the …show more content…
The image that we viewed in class shows a woman and her child chained to a cross that has the word poverty written on it. The figures depicted in the image are running towards education but they lack the means to escape from the chains that are binding them to poverty. The depiction of poverty as something that people are chained to and are incapable of escaping shows that people in extreme poverty can not escape no matter how hard they try because they do not have the opportunities to break free. “They will turn to other boys who steal to get what they want. I can already see them behind the bars of their prison instead of behind the bars of my poverty. Or they will turn to the freedom of alcohol or drugs, and find themselves enslaved. And my daughter? At best, there is for her a life like mine” (Parker 4). This shows that the speaker is aware that her children have no opportunities in life to become something better and that they will end up being poor like her. The speaker in What is Poverty also discusses when she was in junior high and she had to quit to get a job because her mother needed her to help pay for food. This shows that the speaker was never given the chance to escape from poverty when she was young. Furthermore this shows that she understand what it is like to be caught in a cycle that you do not have the opportunity to escape. Aid …show more content…
“The necessities of daily life I began to extract from Dumpsters. Yes, we ate from them. Except for jeans, all my clothes came from Dumpsters. Boom boxes, candles, bedding, toilet paper, a virgin male love doll, medicine, books, a typewriter, dishes, furnishings, and change, sometimes amounting to many dollars” (Eighner 2) This shows that people throw away a lot of things that are in good usable condition. With this much being thrown away if people donated a fraction of this excess to aid organizations rather than just throwing it away many poor people would be able to benefit because they are not able to buy these things for themselves. In What is Poverty Parker discusses all of the things that the poor do not have the money to buy. The list of things ranges from books and a jar of Vaseline to medicine and toothbrushes. This shows that those that have enough money to afford to buy luxuries are willing to throw things away because they do not understand that people are not able to buy the basic necessities for life. “There is no soap, no needles and thread, no hot water, no aspirin, no worm medicine, no hand cream, no shampoo. None of these things forever and ever and ever. So that you can see clearly, I pay twenty dollars a month rent, and most of the rest goes for food” (Parker 4). With out being able to
Poverty is a difficult and horrible way to grow up in life. It causes people to become stressed, and terrified of the world. It also demonstrates the ugly side of the world. When you ae in poverty. It causes people to become desperate and do horrendous things like murder, rape, and prostitution. But poverty can also produce strong, determined, and hopeful humans. In Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus by Carolina Maria de Jesus, we see the ambitious mother of three living the daily struggle of living in the poor favelas in Brazil. She provides the best life she can to her kids, while also perusing her dream of becoming a writer. In Testimony: Death of a Guatemala City by Victor Montejo, the readers follow the inspirational
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
Jo Goodwin Parker’s essay “What is Poverty” is real definition of living in poverty. There is a meaning that she wasn’t us to listen to what it feels like living in poverty. Parker talks about how her children had to face the lack of health conditions. They lived with very minimum money which came from her working to help stable her family. I wouldn’t even use the word stable because there were so many difficulties she had to go through. Telling everyone about her condition to get a job is not easy especially if you have to repeat your situation every time. This essay made me feel like we should be grateful for all the amenities we have in life. I don’t feel sympathy for Parker but I have respect for this woman
Unfortunately, the article’s eye-catching title is a reality in Canada. The wealth gap between the rich and poor is continually increasing. The number of billionaires in the world is so small that they can fit in a single school bus. Sixty-two people now own as much wealth as half the world’s population. The article explained the sad reality of inequality in the United States. It sheds light that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by a trillion US dollars in just five years, while the wealth of the richest 62 people on the planet just kept growing. The article emphasizes that to truly tackle inequality and address extreme poverty several actions must be taken. These must include working with global leaders to end the era of tax havens, supporting women’s rights organizations and helping developing countries provide universal
To some, poverty means a lack a lack of options and prospects while simultaneously being looked down on by others, which creates low self-esteem. Others would argue that being in poverty is an inability of a human being to effectively contribute to society. There is, however, a definition of poverty that should not be overlooked. Although oftentimes poverty is negative, it should not always be looked at as such, especially when one’s needs are met; for some poverty is an individual choice and defining one as a success or failure because of one’s economic standing is entirely a personal matter.
“The world holds enough to satisfy everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed,” Mahatma Gandhi once astutely observed. In a few carefully chosen words, Gandhi pointed out the reason behind economic tension. For example, “Poverty, hunger, homelessness, illiteracy, preventable disease, polluted air and water, and most of the other ills that beset humanity have the same root cause: the inequitable distribution of the planet's wealth and resources” (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, All social and economic problems caused by an unfair distribution of wealth). Additionally, our economic system—unregulated capitalism—advocates and defends a wantonly unequal distribution of wealth. For instance in 2010, “The top 400 people (.0000013% of the population) held more wealth than the bottom 60% combined” (Brian Rogel, Unequal Distribution of Wealth). The top 1 percent has grown richer while inversely affecting the general population. “From 1983-2009 the bottom 60% have had a decrease in both their perce...
Didion and Eighner have different styles of writing, but they both created writings with an instructional component. In both pieces of literature, they guide the audience like a mother to child, guiding us step by step in order to perfect the outcome. Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook” teaches the reader on how to keep note of the past through a notebook. “On Dumpster Diving” written by Lars Eighner, teaches the reader how to successfully dumpster dive and survive. However, Eighner’s piece included many details, whereas Didion’s ideas used examples by flowing from one top to another. It could also be said that Lars Eighner’s piece creates a more thorough analysis on how to dumpster dive. In spite of the fact that the pieces of literature
According to Mayberry (2009) Lars Eighner, a graduate of the University of Texas, became homeless in 1988 and again in 1995 (p. 351). Some of the accounts from Travels with Lisbeth (1993), a book by Lars Eighner, depicted what he went through and what he found during his homeless state. A homeless person must eat and sleep but may not know where or when this might happen next. The human will to survive enabled Eighner to eat food from a dumpster, reach out to other for handouts, and sleep in places other than a bed with covers.
Homelessness is increasing every year and effecting Americans of different age, ethnicity and religion. In Lars Eighner “On Dumpster Diving” he explains what he went through while being homeless. He describes how and what foods someone should be looking for and to always be conscious of what one is eating because there is always a reason why something has been thrown out. He continues to go into detail about other items that can be found in the dumpster like sheets to sleep on and pieces of paper to write on. Things that can keep him busy through the day. Eighner carefully explains to his readers how being a dumpster diver has become a life style for the homeless and this is how they survive. It’s a way of living and they are comfortable doing it. “I began dumpster diving about a year before I became homeless” (Eighner 713). He tries to bring us into the world of being homeless. It is hard to imagine what it would be like in that situation, and how could surviving as a dumpster diver be a way of survival? As a dumpster diver, Eighner is able to tell us what is ok to eat and have and what is not ok for your health. His essay starts by uttering some guidelines of what is and is not safe to eat. “Eating safely from the dumpsters involves three principles: using common sense for evaluating the food, knowing the dumpsters of the given areas and always ask, “Why was this discarded?” (Eighner 714).
... Although it may not seem fair that there are rich people blowing money on impractical and meaningless things while living in poverty, it’s a reality that the United States has experienced for centuries. Works Cited Desilver, Drew. A. “U. S. Income Inequality, On The Rise.” Pew Research Center.
“Why the Rich are getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer” written by Robert Reich, describes as the title says, why the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. In Reich’s essay he delves into numerous reasons and gives examples of each. It makes one wonder if the world will continue on the path of complete economic separation between the rich and the poor.
“On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner and “Two Ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukheriee are both extremely thought-provoking texts that chronicle society’s treatment of marginalized people in the United States. Although, the speakers are of different ethnicities, nationalities and come from very different backgrounds they both share the common perspective of feeling left behind by society and excluded socioeconomically. On Dumpster Diving explores the financial hardships of living in America and the treatment of the lower class, mass consumption and waste. It highlights the theme of reckless gluttony that is prevalent in American society. Whereas, Two Ways to Belong explores the treatment of immigrants a cultural upheaval, mass division
There are many rich and poor people in the world today, in our own country and in others. We have classified by how much they can afford and they are put into a class system. It’s hard for everyone in a country to be equal in the sense of how much money they make. Adriana Delgado says, “The vast differences between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, will be the catalyst for the best intentions to be rewarded with ungratefulness and contempt, creating resentment and mistrust between the classes.” there is always going to be problems between the rich and poor, because one sometimes is held higher than the
In the world today there is a lot of poverty. There is a great divide
Has anyone ever considered thinking about what the world is really going through? How many people don’t have the necessities in order to survive? If so, what are these people going through? Poverty is the state of one who lacks a standard or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Sometimes events occur that changes a person’s perspective on life. Poverty is one that can have a huge effect on not only one person, but also the people around him/her. Over half of the world is going through this tragedy and we, being the ones who created it, have the responsibility to end it.