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Barbara Ehrenreich's On (Not) Getting By In America

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Lindsey Scaparo Nickel and Dimed Essay Surviving off of a minimum wage job in America is a very difficult task to accomplish. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, created an experiment in which she decided to leave her normal life to discover just how hard it is to live off of minimum wage. Ehrenreich made many discoveries during her experiment, most of which contributed to the assertion “On (Not) Getting By in America.” The experiment that Ehrenreich undertook involved her working different minimum wage jobs in three cities. In order to survive on the wages she was earning, Ehrenreich had to find cheap housing and cut back on her expenses, such as food and clothing. Because of this experiment, she made the assertion “On (Not) Getting By in …show more content…

Because housing is so expensive, Ehrenreich was often forced to live in dingy motels or the cheapest trailer she could find. Even when she was living in the cheapest housing, rent was often a struggle because prices were too high to pay off of minimum wage. Not only was housing a problem, but also food. In order to eat well, one needs a refrigerator to keep meats and other foods fresh, which one does not always come with lodging and is expensive to buy. Moreover, a family needs to have enough money to buy groceries each week, which can be difficult when paychecks are given every other week. The people Ehrenreich often worked with tended to live below the poverty line as well. Many of them lived in shared hotel rooms or out of their cars because it was cheaper than actually owning their own places. Even then it was hard to save money. Oftentimes, the people who lived in poverty worked two or more minimum wage jobs, but they still were not able to lift themselves above the poverty line. If people working multiple jobs are still in poverty, then the minimum wage is far below what it should

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The author of this article, Barbara Ehrenreich, dives into her article by discussing her plan to enter the low-wage workforce. She adjusts by trying to go on a $500-a-month “plan”. She went into this with 2 rules. First one being that she cannot use any skills she learned from education or usual work. The second one was that she had to take the best paid job that is offered to her and do her best to hold onto that job.

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Pathos dominates the article when Ehrenreich allows her nephews mother in law, grandchildren, and daughter to move into her house. The situation focuses on pathos because in Ehrenreich’s personal story she includes that “Peg, was, like several million other Americans, about to lose her home to foreclosure” (338). She is effective in her writing by appealing to the readers’ emotions through visual concepts and personal experiences. When I read the article, I felt emotional because the working poor are not fortunate to know if they will have a house or food the next day. I agree with Ehrenreich in which the poor are as important as the wealthy group who get more recognition.

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The American Dream is almost purely run by structural forces, in her perspective, that are constantly attempting to impede the middle class’ ability for upward mobility. Those who are impoverished are there because of their surroundings, the institutions that shape their lives and therefore, they simply cannot find any way out of the poverty trap in which they have found themselves. While Ehrenreich was conducting her case study, she attempted to determine if the American Dream was by attempting to immerse herself in the culture of the poor. She only did so partially due to several stipulations that she set for the experiment as she stated that she would not live in a shelter (Shepard did), that she would not get rid of her vehicle and rely on public transportation (Shepard also did this); however, she did note that even for her, being partially immersed as she was, still found there to be not much difference between herself and those that worked around. She believed, from her experiences, that the social structure of the employment opportunities, was a systematic way to dehumanize the workers.

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Jack Nguyen AP English 3 30, July 2015 Nickel and Dimed Rhetorical Strategies and Notes Thesis: Ehrenreich’s personal use of varied rhetorical strategies allowed her to divulge the working conditions and struggles of the poverty-stricken class to the readers in order to provoke them to realize that something has to be done about poverty.. First Body: What: Allusion Pg. 2, Logos Pg. 37. How & Effect: Ehrenreich uses these personal, rhetorical strategies based on her experiences as a low-wage worker in the poor working class. The effect is that Ehrenreich is able to show the readers the conditions in which the impoverished work in and the daily obstacles that they face in life; also there is an appeal to logic and a reference of a poverty idiom. Why: Ehrenreich is deliberately using these rhetorical strategies to incite the readers about the fact that changes need to be done to poverty because it is a detrimental thing to society.

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The American dream is a dream of a land in which one can prosper with ambition and hard work. This idea has created many illusions for some because in reality the American dream is proven to be something that is rarely achieved. No individual is guaranteed success or destined for failure, but it is apparent that women, people of color, and those born into poverty will face greater obstacles than others, despite being a greater part of the American population. An author that tackles the issue of class in the United States is Gregory Mantsios. In his essay, “Class in America-2009”, Mantsios aims to prove that class affects people’s lives in drastic ways.

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Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America, is the factual narrative of Barbara Ehrenreich’s venture to completely immerse herself in the life of a minimum wage worker. Through her experiment Ehrenreich set out to prove that the average worker can’t “make it on $6 or $7 an hour (1)” in this country; and with her hands on research, she defends while simultaneously proving that the reason so many people are stuck in the lower end of the economy is not because they are lazy or unskilled, but because the jobs they can acquire rarely pay enough to surpass the annual poverty levels. Ehrenreich's use of statistics, examples and the general tone she phrases her rhetorical questions with enlightens her audience of just how hard it is to get by

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Discrimination definitely shaped Ehrenreich’s story. She had many advantages compared to others who actually live in this life style. One of her advantages was her race, another big advantage was not having any children. All these play a role in her story/ experience. She becomes aware at the end of her experiment that the living situation of minimum wage earners are nothing like those of upper class, such as herself.

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Minimum wage is a topic that controls many individual’s lives in today’s society. Many individuals believe minimum wage should be raised to help families get out of poverty. In the documentary, 30 Days, two individuals set out to live in the poverty world. They left everything they owned at home and moved across America to start out fresh. Similar to 30 Days, the individual in “Serving in Florida” moved to Florida to try to experience poverty alone.

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Class Stereotypes Stereotypes are seen as overgeneralized ideas, images, or beliefs of a person based on a group of people. Stereotypes can either be taken or said in a negative or positive way but mostly seen in a negative way. Stereotypes are formed on a life experience, idea or a belief a person may have towards one person based on the person’s gender, race, religion or social class. The most common stereotypes are of the social classes which are the: upper, middle and lower class.

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She explains that it is mathematically impossible to make a living off $6-$7, and through her experiment we can clearly see this. Barbara was unable to make ends meet and eventually was forced to find another job to bring in a second income. She was unable to make it to the grocery store often, due to lack of gas money, and was eating unhealthy food every day and was even losing weight within the four-week time frame. Individuals who are working in low wage jobs are also experiencing living in conditions that are not favorable. Some are living in vehicles, others are paying for a hotel room night to night, and some are living with others that they can’t tolerate rate.

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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.

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In the discussions of food insecurity, one controversial issue has been the prevalent misconception of why people are suffering from obtaining nutritious food on a consistent basis. On one hand, Frank Eltman, a writer for the Business facet of the Huffington post, argues that university students are facing food insecurity due to college expenses exponentially rising within the past decade. On the other hand, Adam Appelhanz, a police officer featured in the documentary “A Place at the Table,” contends that due to budget constraints he has not received a pay raise in the last four years, and is now inevitably utilizing a local food bank in order to ensure that he has something to eat each month. Others even maintain that food insecurity is synonymous

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No Nickels or Dimes To Spare In the book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich writes the story, “Serving in Florida.” She describes her experience living as an undercover waitress when in reality she’s a journalist for culture and politics with a doctorate in biology. Ehrenreich experiences trying to survive on multiple low income jobs to understand what it is like to be in their shoes instead of being apart of the higher middle class.

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We find no evidence that minimum wage increases between 2003 and 2007 affected overall state poverty rates. ”(Leigh, A. (2007) Proposals to increase the minimum wage are politically popular because they are widely seen as an effective way to help the working poor. In spite of it, state and federal minimum wage increases between 2003 and 2007 had no effect on reducing the poverty rates. “Minimum wage increases have thus far provided little more than symbolic support to the working poor.”

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The article talks about poverty within america and the issues and resolutions connected to the economy. In “It is Expensive To Be Poor” Ehrenreich claim is that people in poverty are not in that situation because of self habits but because they simply do not have money at the moment. she explains that anyone

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