Critical Response To Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

In the book Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover into the world of minimum wage employees to research how difficult it is to live off of their salary. She splits up the book into three sections where she tackles these jobs in diverse areas to be able to compare her data. In each section Ehrenreich plows through several jobs, sometimes struggling to afford housing and food. She takes these first-hand experiences and compiles them into a book that gives readers an insight to the world of minimum wage workers. Ehrenreich begins her journey by taking time to prepare for the hardships she may face along the way.

When Ehrenreich is enduring the stress that accompanies these laborious jobs, she might not be working as hard. This is because her living conditions do not depend on the small wages that these jobs supply. The people who Ehrenreich worked with actually need the money to sustain their modest living conditions. They have no alternate life to return to and have to endure their working conditions for a much longer period of time than Ehrenreich. Since Ehrenreich only has to experience the lifestyles of these people for a small amount of time, instead of her whole life, Ehrenreich cannot truly understand their

Ehrenreich uses pathos through the tone and style of her writing to help draw the reader in in order to create a connection in the point or argument that she is making. She describes in brief detail the different coworkers and customers that she comes across. When she met Benny who is a sewer repair man “who cannot even think of eating until he has absorbed a half hour of air-conditioning and ice water.” There are the German tourists, a lesbian couple, and a “kindly retired cop” named Sam. Also, as her journey of temporary living as a minimum wage worker slowly started coming to an end describing it at “plunge into poverty”.

My article deals with the study of society and social interaction of the Middle Class and how they survived on a Nickel and Dimed. In our text (n) 2, (pg. 42, paragraph 2) the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich brought the two stories together by research, that it is, impossible to make it on minimum wage work. The journalist observed in her study the mindset of the working Middle Class people, their persistence to make ends meet, to take care of their household, family and the will to make thing change. The “Middle Class” an aimless expression applied to those who is not on the system of welfare. In the United States certain development changed the past three decades, due to after World War II, the benefits of growth, and money making flow to

As an investigative approach to write an article on the lives of minimum wage workers for Harper’s magazine, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich conducted her research by assuming multiple low paid positions herself. Her essential goal for this study was to determine how low paid workers survive on their income. She began her adjustment to the working class lifestyle by establishing regulations for herself to eliminate any advantages she could have from her real life. In doing so, she abandoned all of the luxuries that her middle-class career afforded her, such as a comfortable living environment, fresh quality meals, and working independently. Immersing herself into this lifestyle allowed her to witness the arduous circumstances of low wage living

With the connections to the rhetorical appeals, she is able to present examples that people who has worked as a low waged worker can relate to. Through her experience and what she has observed from her coworkers, Ehrenreich revealed the struggles of the work environment and the living situation that resulted from the low waged

The topic of minimum wage is one that can lead to heated debates from both sides of the aisle over how much a person should be getting in payment versus how much work they do, or how hard they work to earn the payment. Countless people today are not getting paid the amount they should be based off of the work that they are putting in to their job. There are arguments leaning towards the raising of minimum wage, and there are arguments leaning against the raising of the minimum wage, however one of the arguments I find persuasive. There are some arguments that lean towards the raising of the minimum wage. The first argument presented involves job creation in the United States.

Throughout, “Serving in Florida,” Ehrenreich tells her life story by going into details not only about herself, but the ones she works with as well. She explains what is it like to work a low paying job and illustrates how much of a struggle it is to pay for meals, gas and rent. Ehrenreich includes many conversations with the individuals she worked and goes into detail on how they struggle to make a living as well. One of the people Ehrenreich talked with was Gail. Gail worked as a waitress and was sharing a room for $250 a month with a friend she didn’t get along with.

Because the cost of living has welkin rocketed, it has become virtually infeasible to raise a family on a minimum wage job. A person living on his or her own cannot survive on minimum wage job either. Their living expense would just be exorbitant. The earnings of minimum wage workers are crucial to their families salubrity. Evidence from 2013 and 2014 minimum wage increase shows that an average minimum wage worker brings home more than a moiety of his or her family 's weekly earnings.

To begin with, Alan S. Blinder, the author of “Abolishing the Penny Makes Good Sense” argues that pennies should be abolished. He effectivity builds this argument by using plain folks appeal, logos, and bandwagon appeal to support his claim. In addition, the first technique the author uses to argue about abolishing pennies is plain folks appeal. In the text he states “If it’s not worth the time of an 8 year old to wrap pennies, why does the U.S government keep producing the things?”

The amount of time spent with something will change your views and thinking, that is what Barbara Ehrenreich and Lars Eighner share in their papers. Both had low status jobs after having a college education and their work is similar, yet opposites in some ways. The difference is that in Ehrenreich’s, “Serving in Florida”, she believes that restaurant waitressing jobs are degrading to workers because she only had one experience for research and had to stick with it for a short time that she chose, it was unnecessary work to her. While in Eighner’s, “On Dumpster Diving”, he thinks of them as a privilege and enjoyable because he had no other choice than his line of work, he had to put up with being homeless for 3 years to survive without any help.

The Grapes of Wrath details an era of American History where many citizens were unemployed as a result of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl that occurred during the same decade. The combination of these issues led many families–a large portion of those from the southern Midwest–to migrate to California, where they were forced to work for extremely low wages in order to provide for their families. After many years, America made it through the challenging economic and social times of the 30’s and 40’s, but problems surrounding low wages and income never completely vanished. In 2015, many low-income workers went on strike to protest the minimum wage, on which they were trying to survive (Horovitz 1). These workers included those from McDonald’s,

Which leads to the rebuttal of the argumentative piece, “Curiously, most members of Congress who take a hard line on immigration also strongly oppose increasing the minimum wage, claiming it will hurt businesses and reduce jobs” (Dukakis & Mitchell, 2006). Nonetheless the authors have an exception to this rebuttal, that is if “We want to reduce illegal immigration, it makes sense to reduce the abundance of extremely low-paying jobs that fuels it. If we raise the minimum wage, it’s possible some low- end jobs may be lost; but more Americans would also be willing to work in such jobs, thereby denying them to people who aren’t supposed to be here in the first place” Assuming that most american citizens are going to work, they would take up all the jobs provided out there, assuming that the minimum wage went up and they would be payed better (Dukakis & Mitchell,

I know from personal experience that it is a rough life without being able to get educated and find a high paying job. The minimum wage is not high enough for people to make a living off of if needed. For example, Colleen, one of Ehrenreich’s coworkers at the hotel in Maine says, “I don’t mind, really, because I guess I’m a simple person, and I don’t want what they

Many politicians, business owners, and citizens hold fast to the belief that heightening the salary attached to minimum wage positions will yield negative benefits for our society. This opinion is supported by three vital view-points. The first can be found in the news article, “The Argument Against Raising Minimum Wage.” It expresses how the enlargement of this payment will take a toll on employment. The document reasons that if the amount of money employees earn is expanded, companies will be less likely to hire as many workers (Huppke).