In her last chapter of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich evaluates her experiment to survive on minimum wage. She highlights a number of challenges that continually face the working poor. In addition, she provides her own explanation for what is holding the working poor back from economic success and security.
Please identify the challenges facing the working poor as explained by Ehrenreich. Then assess her explanation of the obstacles facing the poor. Finally, provide you own evaluation for how our society treats or deals with those living in poverty.
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The working Poor’s challenges are transportation, for sure one of the big ones, housing, savings and many more obstacles. Transportation is one of the major challenges, just to get to the job. Most of the working poor don't even have a car in order to get to a job they either walk or bum rides of family members or friends. Most walk, use public transportation, or ride a bike to work. The wages that they earn are so low that they can't afford a car and can't make payments. Housing is another big challenge seeing how they can't even make enough to have a car. Some of her co-workers in the book lived in vans or with other people and its not that they didn’t work enough they were working full time, its just their wages are so low that they can't afford even a rent in a trailer park. The working poor can't save up enough money to put back to start paying rent because if they don’t use the money it is likely that they will not be eating the next day. Same as if they take a day off of work they might not even make the rent that week or not eat a few days. They put in 40 plus hours a week and still barely make it. The wages that they make are low and it makes there own self-esteem low as well. They think that since they only make that much that is how much they are worth as humans as well. With booming prices in the housing market an affordable apartment is no longer affordable because the price of living has risen. It used to be around 25-30% of your income was used on your housing and now its more around 40% so the prices have rose and the working poor aren't getting enough to be able to keep up with it and pay for groceries and raise a family. My thought on the matter are the poor are poor because of the rich. The rich take over the housing available to the poor and tear it down or turn it into a hotel and then it leaves the poor to be homeless or try to live in places out of their reach which in return takes more money away from them. The management is being too greedy with there money only giving store discounts instead of raises to there workers. They wont give them more money for there hard work and efforts and then turn around and frown on the lower class. The rich/upper class needs to be willing to give raises for the hard work of the poor in there jobs just as the rich get promotions and bonus checks for theirs. If the upper class worked in their offices all day everyday doing the best job they could, out doing everyone else and then didn't get a raise or some kind of bonus they would cry about it and probably look for a new job. the working poor can't do that they work hard everyday of there life and in the end the barely make it if they even do make it at all. You can't be in the upper class and look down on the lower class and just say they don't work. If only they had a job they could make it themselves. The problem is they do work and work and work and yet they don't make enough to even make for rent and groceries in the same week.
Barbara explained that working minimum wage jobs was not the easiest thing to do. She stated that she had to master new terms, new tools, and new skills. Each job presents a self-contained social world, with its own personalities, hierarchy, customs, and standards. She stated that another tricky issue was standards. Being someone "good to work with." She had to live up to all these expectations. I think she is totally correct on all the obstacles facing the poor. I mean she went through it for awhile. She has to have some idea of what goes on. She worked the jobs and got by on what she made doing it. So therefore she must have some idea. I believe that our society today gives the poor a pretty good chance. We help them in many ways. It is not like we are just letting them be poor. They can make it. We have Welfare and things like that. Not everyone can have money and we shouldn't just let the ones who don't suffer. But I also think that most people can turn that around. If you don't want to be poor, I think you can change that. I mean, I know some people don't have all the qualities some others have. There are plenty of descent paying jobs out there that do not require a college education. And this book just showed you that if you work hard there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to get by. So I don't think that we should lay this all on society because they do what they can to help.
Some of the challenges the working poor face is some cannot function in society. When Barb tried living a month in a city with minimum wage salary she found out it wasn’t as easy as it seems. She only had herself; she didn’t have any kids or pets. If she did she wouldn’t be able to afford them because she could barley afford taking care of herself. In most of the cities she found she could not go another month living their. When she was living in a home she didn’t stay their very long she went from motel to motel. If she found an apartment she wouldn’t be living by herself she would be with numerous amount of people because they would split the rent and pay for it that way because none of them would be able to afford their own apartment on there own. One other challenge facing the poor today is not being able to get food. Barbra didn’t have to go through this because she had a rule she wouldn’t let herself starve.
We deal with people in poverty by giving them shelters, food pantries, giving them food at Christmas and thanksgiving, creating something called "section 8" section 8 is where someone who doesn’t have the money for rent, they pay their rent for them but they have to have a job and sometimes they have to pay a certain amount depending on their income. In school we give free or reduced lunch and some do not have to pay school fees. In college there is financial aid to help young adults who do not have the money to go to college. And there are also grants. Our society treats the poor really good they get some advantages that the middle class do not. I know that’s because they do not have money but I still stick with the "it's their fault and stop blaming society for your wrong doing" I feel bad for the poor. But to some point it's not society's fault you don’t have a college education, its not societies fault your addicted to drugs, and it’s definitely not societies fault if you can’t keep a job. If you have a medical disability that understands you can’t help that. But to give people who are healthy and able to work SSI just seems wrong. Yes, people make mistakes but should society be blamed for your mistakes? It just makes me angry when I see some of the kids at school acting like they don’t care about their grades and they don’t want to be here. Aren’t those the people society is going to have to take care of in 10 years? You have to do good or your not going to succeed in this day of age. Especially since social security is in such trouble. We cant afford to care for people who don’t care. Take care of yourself and actually work for what you have. Seeing people take, take, take is getting really old. Give back and you will succeed.
Barbara thinks it will be easy at first but then she sees that it is harder then it looks. That every body has to concentrate on their job. They learn new things, new tools. Some jobs you have to be fit and have to know what to do at the job. Rent is easy for a educated low-wage worker. The amount of money that is coming in is going other places like food and gas in the car and electricity. And it is worse if you have kids because that’s more money you need, more faces to feed. it is pretty hard to get by if that’s the case.
Our society treats people in poverty like they aren’t even there. They get the worst jobs. They can’t even afford paying rent working one job so they have to get two jobs. And that probably not enough to get food or rent for a month. Poverty is a problem because some people can’t get out of it. And welfare isn’t going to be there forever. Some of the people in poverty are spending there money on drugs then trying to get by with what is left and they can’t. When people that are in poverty they usually live in cars or run-down apartments is all they can afford.
Barbara explained in pretty good detail the obstacles facing low-wage workers. To be considered easy to work with you need to be fast and thorough. It is better to sometimes know too much or never reveal your full ability. Barbara thinks the following traits are essential to job readiness: punctuality,cleanliness,cheerfulness,obidence. Some people in welfare need to get up and get a job so they can get out of poverty. If the rich and poor are battling for a house the poor doesnt stand a chance. The rich have a better chance at getting the latest technology. I think she does a pretty decent job of explaining the challenges facing the poor. I think some people help the poor but most people won't for some reason. I think we could do alot more to help the poor. Since America has so many welathy people they should give some of their money to charity. We need to do alot more to help the poor.We shouldn't treat the poor differently.
Challenges that the working poor have to face-as explained by Barbara-is, each job has a social world with its own personality, hierarchy, customs, and standards. By personality Barbara is talking about the general feeling you get working wherever you work. This is caused by the people you work with (co-workers). Co-workers could be a huge challenge in the workplace. Somewhat like a bully in school. Most people aren't affected by these people. But co-workers can still be a challenge even if they're not mean or disrespectful. They could be lazy. This would cause you to have to do more work than you need to. If you work at somewhere like Kroger that is true for sure :) With hierarchy Barb is talking about the ranking system of the workplace. It is a huge challenge to rise up in the workplace and make something of yourself whenever you have rude managers ranked above you who barely see you as a human being. At Kroger, they are rude, sometimes, but they sort of treat me like I'm human. Customs are a large challenge in the workplace. It can be hard to fit in and be accepted by your co-workers. You have to allow yourself to get used to the place, the people, and the job. Many times this is a huge problem for people. Sometimes no one wants to help you fit in. For example when Barbara went to work on her first day at the diner (I believe it was Jerry's) no one gave her much attention or respect. this is because-as the workers say-not many people stay after the first day. Standards ties in with customs. Standards in the workplace are your ability to do your job. Its hard to satisfy someone who is never satisfied. Barbara is absolutely correct with all of her studies and all of her explanations for the challenges. She has found that it is hard for these people and she has figured out reasons why. My own evaluation for how society treats these people would be: the society gives help, but also criticizes the working poor. I don't think this should happen (the criticizing) because the lower class "unskilled" jobs are needed just as much as any job. And the people working these jobs go through far more stress and face far more challenges than higher class people in society.
c/b
Barbara explains that there are many obstacles facing the poor. And that she thought since she had a PhD that she would do this experiment with ease. That was not the case as she learned to be a minimum wage worker it was very demanding and it took a mass amount of concentration. During her experiment she had to learn and master new terms, new tools, and new skills. That she was capable of screwing up very easily.
She also mentions that she might not have been able to complete her jobs if she would have had to go home to toddlers or not had a car, she actually had an upper hand to the rest of her poor co-workers.
If you are in the upper class, you will have an advantage over the lower class in many ways she explains. The rich have technology on their side things they can afford to help them out to get through the day and help them out. But the poor they don't got any help. And finding an upper-class job, you would find that on the internet. For a lower-class job seeker they look in the want ads or see help wanted signs. Poverty is at an all time high in the US, food banks are scrounging for more donations, churches are filling up with homeless families, people do not have homes or anything to eat, worst off they have no money.
Society I think treats people in poverty differently like they don’t have a purpose. We are so much better than them because we have an education or we make a bigger paycheck. The poor have a lot harder life to live because they work twice as hard as most people in the world and barley break even. Most of them can barely live because they work non-stop. Most of poor people have two jobs and come home and go straight to bed, they don’t really live and enjoy life. As a society I think we look down upon the lower class and treat them a lot differently. We don’t give them respect that most of them really do deserve.
The Working poor or low wage class have the challenge of almost no education or no education, long hours for little pay, hard work with some health benefits, and only a little over twenty percent of the total income in the United States. An example of long hours would be every job Barbara took. She worked the entire day and only got around five to seven dollars an hour on average which is minimum wage. Hard work would be waitressing and house cleaning. They are very physically demanding jobs and are nothing to laugh toward. She may have failed in two of the three cities, but she always tried to find the best place she could live out of which most minimum wage workers do not do so they can have a little more money to use. Also she is single and living on her own where most minimum wage people have kids or at least one other person to support. I am surprised she lasted as long as she did and actually seemed to be doing well in Maine. People who are poor usually have a harder time switching jobs then Barbara did in Florida, switching from Hearthside to Jerry's. They have more friction and are less likely to move because the outcome is so uncertain and they would have to take another job that they never worked at before and would have to learn all over again. This is something people do not like to do ever. Usually people have to take two jobs or work seven days a week like Barbara did in Maine. She earned three hundred dollars a week and her rent was four hundred eighty dollars a month so she only used forty percent of her income. The social life for a minimum wage worker is a lot different then everyone else’s because it is usually and only with the people you work with and they usually do not talk with their bosses at all. It is kind of like groups in high school everyone stays to their certain group and only takes in people her are just like them or have the same job as them. Unless it is a place like Jerry's where the only one you do not talk to is the boss which is usually how it is except for Wal-Mart in Barbara’s' case because there are a lot of people who work at Wal-Mart and she probably was not sure who to trust. Another problem is that if higher class people can stay away from public places and can afford private schools and clubs they will do it. It explains why public schools, buses, and other public places, and things are deteriorating and eventually are shutdown. If a person in the top twenty percent of income complains someone usually fixes it and apologizes to them, and if they complain enough a person far below their class gets fired. Her evaluation is very good she understands what most people do not and she has also opened my eyes to it too. She has made me rethink my plan after high school and helped me pursue my dream with a lot more effort so I can be at least in the middle-class which sadly is not a whole lot better than the poor class because of all the debts. Oh well it is better than working at Wendys my whole life.
The working poor often do not have enough money to eat. They also face class prejudice from the middle and upper classes. The way I see it, Barbara is correct in saying that the poor face economical prejudice, low wages, and do not get the pay that they deserve. I would say that the way our society treats the working poor is the same way we treat other countries like those in Africa, in that we think that since we have more money than them we are better than them. But just because you have more money does not mean that you are better than everyone else. However, things are getting better for the poor people at the same time, you just don't see it because the media does not like to tell us positive things about the economy. I agree with Barbara, in that eventually the working poor will decide that they've had enough with giving so much and getting so little in return.
Society doesn’t treat those living in poverty very well. They get the worst jobs for the worst pay, and the worst hours. They get no insurance or medical. They get no retirement, no pension. They don't even get paid enough to feed themselves especially if they have one or multiple children.
I love Mr. McFarland.
Barbara states that she believes she did a great job as a poor working class worker. Although she never received hardly any praise from fellow coworkers. The poor working class often showed a lack of enthusiasm and never overachieved due to if management figured out they had more energy they'll abuse it. And without a pay raise which is unlikely to happen there was no need to try to raise the bar. Many of the lower class jobs were physically demanding and take a harsh toll on the body after several years of backbreaking work that may just barely get you by. Barbara found out many diets of coworkers consisted of snack and fast foods which in the least doesn’t provide a good diet. Often the cost of living in a apartment or motel if you are in the poor class takes up nearly all of your paycheck and leaves only a small amount for necessities and rarely any spare cash for anything else. As well she feels very strong that it must be extremely difficult to live of only one self’s wages. Most of the time the poor working class has to group up and feed of each other's wages to pay rent or take care of the kids. Barbara had transportation throughout her whole journey and many of the poor lack that and sometimes that can prevent them to finding a better job. While the rich control the stock market and proves to be a reason why rent is so high and often living space is further away from the work place. Also many of the lower paying jobs that support a vast majority of people don’t offer health care.
How I think we treat and are in poverty is that the poor don’t make an attempt to raise their wages and often those who have advantages in society take advantage of what is brought upon them.
First off, housing is a big one because without that they cant do anything besides live on the streets. Another one Barbara mentions is the use of transportation. They could just walk to work or even buy a bicycle for about 50$ but it would of been a lot easier possessing a car or other form of transportation.
Barbara also states that in the month that she lived living in all three spots in her experiment, she had a hard time living on what she was making. She wondered how some minimum wage workers did it, some having a kid or more to pay for also. I think i agree with the statements that Barbara is saying because I also work a minimum wage job and without transportation i probably wouldn’t have a job. And I know I don’t have as many bills as a normal minimum wage worker does but the 2 or 3 that I do have I am struggling to pay. I think that society doesn't care about others living in poverty as long as they are making what they need to make.
I disagree with Cory s. because we don’t treat Africa with disrespect. We actually try to help the countries in need of help. Like Iraq and South Korea in the Korean War. But I do agree with his statements on the poor giving a lot to society and getting so little in return. We do help countries in need of helping we don’t sit back and pick on them like Cory is stating and that’s what I disagree upon.
I do not agree with Joe W because I don’t see how society does not treat people in poverty well because we give them so much. We give them food, section 8, SSI and many more things so how is that not treating them well? It's not our fault they are poor what did we do? We didn’t rob them, force them not to get an education; we didn't get them addicted to drugs. Why should we be held responsible for their wrong doing? We shouldn’t and it ticks me off when people say we should. We didn’t do anything to make someone poor we are just living our life and they live theirs. Why punish us for their wrong doing? If you are healthy, physically and mentally able you can work, you can go to school, you don’t have to make bad decisions just because you are in that class or you grew up in that class. It seems like most the time people who get there rent paid for them or some other financial aid most the time they are lazy. And that brings me to my point again, why shouldn’t someone who is mentally and physically able be able to care for themselves and go to school and get a decent job.
i disagree with cory they do not face class prejudices. i dont think people think their better than them, the rich just think their not worth helping. I honestly dont think things are getting better for them, well not notacibly better anyways. i do agree with his final point, they will decide they have had enough with so much work for so little pay.
I disagree with Joe W. He is true with his claim that the poor don't get paid well but they don't always get the worst hours of all. Some of them actually get very nice hours where they work during the day and have the nights with their children. I’m not saying that they all get the best hours in the world but its a little much to say that they always get the worst hours. Also I don’t know why he is saying that they don’t eat. Apparently they do eat or else they would all die off, but again he made another profound statement. True they don’t eat well or maybe skip a meal but saying that they don’t eat is just a stupid statement.
I disagree with Josh B because the poor even with welfare and everything have a hard time getting by because they do not get enough income from their jobs. Most of the time they do not get any promotions and they cannot get a better job because of education. Welfare is failing and there is only so much we can do. The poor are getting poorer not richer which is making their lives harder and making it improbable that the poor will survive or be able to become rich. One person might get lucky and stumble on something but not everyone will. This is why I do not agree with Josh and why society can do better.
I disagree with Christina. She stated that Barb thought it would be easy at first but she found out how hard it actually was. That's wrong. She knew it was hard even before she started. If she thought these jobs were easy before she did this experiment, she would have never done this experiment.
She did however find the task at her jobs easy, because she said she was in good health. But after a while she found out she was affected by the hard labor. But my point is, she didn’t think it was going to be easy. She knew she knew she had advantages, but she still knew it would be hard.
I disagree with Cory because it has nothing to do with Africans. Not everyone thinks if they have more money then someone that they are better than them. I do agree that the media never shows anything good about the economy.
I disagree with what Joe W. said because I think the poor get alot of help. We don't just let them stay poor. We give them many different types of help.
I diagree with Cory when he says that we treat the poor the same as we do in other countries. I don't think we treat the poor the same at all. I also disagree when he said that the things for the poor are getting better, things are not getting better for the poor, as I think they are getting worse.
I disagree with Cory S. and any other that says poor don’t deserve the pay they get. There is always college degrees you can get to major in something or another. It takes hardly any skills to do a lower class job. I agree though that in every economy we treat the poor differently then the middle or upper class, I’ am not so sure if we think were necessarily better than them.
I'm arguing with matt t. Not every body treats the poor differently. Some of the rich do give their money to charity. The only reason some people are on welfare is because they are injured and they can’t work. She did explain the obstacles very well. But some of the people are only going through the pain because they cant find a better job. The only reason they cant find a better job is because they don’t have the education.
Barb faced many challenges, for one was earning enough money$ for food and for a place to stay. Another challenge that I think the poor have to go through is getting from place to place not everyone has a car, and it also could be hard finding a place to work that is close to home or from walking distance. Another great challenge would be if he or she is a single parent they have to work enough hours and enough jobs but also have to be home in order to get food on the table. I also think another challenge would be drugs; drugs can cause many problems in someone’s life, but if you are poor it could make life harder because drugs can be expensive, they can also ruin someone’s life causing the person to be fired or not functional. I feel if you are poor you have to work extra hard and extra long just to survive.
People in the working class don't have fair treatment. They work as hard as anyone but can barely survive on minimum wage. It's hard enough to have money for themselves but for a family it would be near impossible. The working poor cannot even afford to take a day off when they want. The wages they receive are unfair.
But then again, should they be fair? If everyone had equal opputunity and equal living conditions, wouldn't that be a communist country? American society treats their working poor about the same as other countries treat their working poor, like working poor.
I agree with what Alex says about the challenges the working poor face. The management is very greedy with their money, and does not want to pay their employees the wages they deserve. They can’t even afford decent housing, let alone their own car. If management keeps doing what they are doing, they will face strikes by their workers, and possibly be driven out of business.
Some of the Challenges that are faced by the working poor are transportation, money and savings. People need to be able to have transportation to and from work. If they don’t have a car they might try to take a bus and that costs money, if they don’t have the money for a bus then they won’t be getting to work. Money was another issue for most of the people working the low paying jobs. Most of them didn’t even have enough money to afford a place to live. Some of them lived in motels, or their cars. The minimum wage job does not pay enough money for a person to live on, many people tried to live on it and barley got by. Our society treats those living in poverty by giving those shelters, food pantries, and other help if they are disabled and are not able to work. I feel bad for people who are not able to make enough money to have a place to live, or for that matter be not able to afford something to eat. I think that the people only working and trying to get themselves out of poverty are the only ones that need help, if a person is just lazy and doesn’t want to work they don’t deserve the help.
Alex K, if you were rich would you be giving money to the poor? Of course they're are making the poor poorer by starting hotels and businesses for themselves, it's making them richer. Why wouldn't someone make themselves richer? Any poor person would do the same thing. It's very easy to say the rich should be more willing to give raises to the poor. But people are not just going to hand over their money if they really don't have to. If the poor people right now became rich and the rich became poor. It would be the same way, the rich would still look down on the poor it would just be different rich people.
The challenges facing the poor mainly consist of housing, transportation, fair treatment in the workplace, saving up money, trying to keep their job balanced with their home life, and many more challenges. These can be even more difficult for people who have kids and other family to take care of in their house hold, especially trying to save up money because they have t spend more to keep things going. Barbra goes through these experiments and finds that living in poverty is really difficult to do. She learns that no job is actually "unskilled". Her experiments could of been more accurate if she would had children or a family to take care of. Even though she didn't she still could of taken the money out to simulate a family. Even though it seemed hard to her she had it easy. Our society treats those dealing with poverty with different help organization. But even that sometimes isn't enough to live on. So really the government doesn't do that much to help out.
I disagree with Cory, because I do not think that our society compares the poor to countries like Africa or other poor countries. I think for the most part if you are poor it is your fault, for example they had the chance to go to college and get an education, but chose not to.
I agree with what Christina said that the welfare program is not going to be here forever. People are not going to know what to do without the help. They will probably be forced to live in shelter homes because they will have no other place to go. Also i agree with what she said how people cant get out of poverty, I also believe that people can get out of it if they work hard enough and try their hardest to get out of poverty.
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