ipl-logo

The Secret Shame Of Middle-Class Americans By Neal Gabler

854 Words4 Pages

The article “The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans” was featured on The Atlantic website. It was published in the May 2016 print issue of the magazines under the heading Business. The article was written by Neal Gabler. This 6,800-word article was written about the both the personal financial struggles of the author and general financial struggles of the American middle-class that are so often masked. According to the author, the article was inspired by a statistic published by the Federal Reserve Board: “47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all.” The author, Neal Gabler, says that he relates to their situation because he is in that 47 percent and understands that struggling financially is “source of shame, a daily humiliation” from which silence is the “only protection.” Apparently, economists typically use unemployment statistics and net worth to measure the financial …show more content…

Research indicates that though 60% of respondents said they had “suffered some sort of ‘economic shock’ in the past 12 months - a drop in income, a hospital visit, the loss of a spouse…,” only 38 percent had enough liquid savings to be able to cover it with money they saved.” Also, 55 percent of households didn’t have “enough liquid saving to replace a month’s worth of lost

Show More
Related
290 Words | 2 Pages

Paul Krugman author of the article “Confronting Inequality” stresses the inequality of our social classes in the United States, he uses statistics to demonstrate the staggering consequences of this inequality within our social classes. Krugman emphasizes the fact that a majority of our wealth is owned by about one percent of the population, which is leaving the middle and lower class at an extreme disadvantage. One example Krugman uses is education; children that have wealthy families, have a higher percentage of finishing college than those of lower income families, proving the statement that Krugman was accentuating, “Class-inherited class- usually trumps talent.” The parents within this middle to lower class have been exceed their financial

Read More
527 Words | 3 Pages

In a New York Times article, “Too Poor to Make the News,” author Barbara Ehrenreich focuses on the impact the recession has caused to the lives of the working poor. She begins her article by describing how the newly group, known as Nouveau poor, have to give up valuables where as the working poor have to give up housing, food, and prescription medicines. Ehrenreich’s purpose is to inform her readers who are blessed enough not to suffer like the working poor. Barbara Ehrenreich’s article examines the impacts the recession has on the lives of the working poor, by demonstrating pathos, and makes readers aware of the sufferings the poor have to face. Barbara Ehrenreich examines the aspects that are impacting the working poor from the recession.

Read More
710 Words | 3 Pages

In Allen’s chart, he illustrates how only 2% of the American population makes over $10,000 a year. With the poverty level at $2000 a year, most of the American population fell close to or under this annual income (Doc 8). These low wages of annual income made people's’ lives a true struggle. Citizens would work for nearly 24 hours, all week long, just to get by with basic living standards. An example of living at or below the poverty level, is documented in Paul Blanshard’s “How to live on Forty-six Cents a Day” interview with a woman living in South Carolina with her family of 6.

Read More
1216 Words | 5 Pages

Few have college degrees” (Johnston, K. 2014). Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickle and Dimed, left her life as a journalist and became one of the so called working poor (Ehrenreich, B. 2001). In this paper I will discuss the main issues in the first half of her book, I will explain what theoretical perspective her work fits into, how she did her research, the strengths and limitations to her approach, and describe how the American economy may look to a low wage worker. Main Issues First I will discuss some of the main issues Ehrenreich writes about in the first two chapters of her book Nickle and Dimed.

Read More
260 Words | 2 Pages

The incompetence of the world will be the motive to all catastrophic events. History will always repeat itself due to the world’s perpetual process of thinking. Will the prosperity of the Middle Class ever thrive? Will the “American Dream” become true? Since 1928, the Middle Class has been morally defeated.

Read More
2405 Words | 10 Pages

Danny Schechter wrote Investigating the Nation’s Exploding Credit Squeeze, two years before the 2008 world crisis. It is said that only true crisis can lead to change, an explanation to why so many people ignored the signs. Everyone is a target to the credit industry, not only the poor or middle classes. In a consumption driven culture, it is impossible not to spend your money and get into debt. Products seem fairly cheap, companies are always suggesting that you are making “a great bargain”, “buy two and one free” and it seems that everything is always “on sale” (Schechter 357).

Read More
1318 Words | 6 Pages

Mantsios’ compares the profiles of different Americans lifestyles in his text and develops the idea that an individual’s class standing can affect their livelihood in detrimental ways, “The lower one’s class standing, the more difficult it is to secure appropriate housing, the more time is spent on routine tasks of everyday life, the greater is the percentage of income that goes to pay for food and other basic necessities, and the greater is the likelihood of crime victimization” (293). Mantsios explains that one’s class standing can affect the chances of survival and success. Ehrenreich describes her own housing experiences as a low income worker. To reduce her overall costs and to obtain a second job, Ehrenreich moves closer to Key West. Ehrenreich has just enough money to pay the rent and deposit on a tiny trailer at the Overseas Trailer Park.

Read More
703 Words | 3 Pages

Journal Entry #6 After reading Michael Zweig's “The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret”, I read and was able to determine his own perspective of class. Zweig states that he wouldn’t consider the United States to be a middle class society and that he thinks that the majority of Americans today are part of the working class. He defines class as power, whether it is power in the workplace, cultural, economic, or political and in the larger society and not so much it depending income. I think he defines class as power due to the fact that we as the people have the power to experience class in many ways. We are all born and raised differently and all come from cultural backgrounds.

Read More
1914 Words | 8 Pages

“We're all burdened by our history of racial inequality. It's created a kind of smog that we all breathe in, and it has prevented us from being healthy”- Bryan Stevenson. You can see inequality anywhere. You’ll see it on the news, anywhere on social media, in the newspaper, you’ll see it everywhere and It’s a really big problem in our world. In All American Boys by Jason Reynolds we are shown that Rashad gets accused of stealing chips at a store.

Read More
1751 Words | 8 Pages

My understanding of the “American Dream” is a concept of migrating to the United States, starting from scratch, and becoming rich and successful by working hard. But after reading Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell change my perspective of the “American Dream” by providing the idea of luck and opportunity playing a major factor in one 's success. Almost all the success story of the immigrant in the book was by opportunity because of birth, chance by cultural background and circumstances. Gladwell changed my view of how the “American Dream” is accomplished, not solely by hard work, but luck and opportunity are what factor into someone accomplishing the “American Dream”. Reading Outliers, the main thesis or central premise of Gladwell on why some people

Read More
642 Words | 3 Pages

Reaching the American Dream is frequently portrayed as requiring individual effort and tenacity. This narrative holds that everyone can prosper in America if they put in the effort and seize the opportunity. The memoir "Growing Up" by Russell Baker, however, provides a different viewpoint on the difficulties and complications of realizing the American Dream, particularly during the Great Depression. Baker's own experiences highlight the effects of financial stress on people and families.

Read More
189 Words | 1 Pages

Atlantic Media Company, 18 May 2012. Web. 27 Apr. 2016. "The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground. "

Read More
1474 Words | 6 Pages

Since each family was affected differently and some not at all, this paper only focuses on the ones who were hit the hardest and therefore their life was significantly changed throughout the era. First, what we need is to look at how the typical household looked before the Wall Street

Read More
748 Words | 3 Pages

Reading through RIP, the Middle Class: 1946-2013, it became fairly obvious that the author, Edward McClelland, was presenting a thesis idea that consisted of promoting the middle class through examples of its prime time when middle class thrived. McClelland made the point clearly as he repeatedly provided examples ranging from the glory days of the assembly line industry that had provided high paying jobs for many people, to presidents who attempted to keep business within the United States to promote home grown jobs. He was especially focused on the point that the middle class was shrinking due to a large discrepancy between the wealthy and the rest of society as capitalism achieves its goal of padding the wealthiest and keeping the middle

Read More
721 Words | 3 Pages

Although there a few modern examples of people with a ‘rags to riches’ story, namely Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs, the masses of people born into lower income households don’t commonly rise to the middle class. A recent study by Pew Charitable Trust signifies how important family wealth is, as the “median family wealth of those who made it to middle class was $94,586, while the median wealth of those stuck at the bottom was just $8,892” (Hargreaves 1). The higher a family’s financial capital is, the easier it is to invest in opportunities such as education, which increases income. Winston in 1984 observes how the proles are intelligent in their daily tasks, stating how "even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory” (Orwell 72).

Read More

More about The Secret Shame Of Middle-Class Americans By Neal Gabler

Related Topics

Open Document