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Overview Of Barbara Ehrenreich´s Nickle And Dimed

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According to Katie Johnston, (2014) the working poor are “waitresses, department store clerks, and fast-food workers. They clean office bathrooms and airplane cabins, care for the elderly, and serve hors d’oeuvres at high-end fund-raisers. One in five workers in the state, the majority of them over 25, make $12 an hour or less. As employers squeeze costs, these low-wage earners frequently can only get part-time work without benefits, some with irregular schedules that make second jobs and child care arrangements difficult. They have no protections from having hours cut and they receive no severance pay if they are let go without warning. Many don’t have cars, making it hard to get to work when public transportation isn’t running. Those who …show more content…

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. Some of the issues that Ehrenreich mentions in her book have to do with how difficult life is for a low wage worker. She talks about the physical and mental toughness of a lot of the lower paying jobs such as waitressing, maids, and cleaners. Many of the workers can …show more content…

Her work was similar to what Karl Marx describes in his theory of alienation and exploitation. She was able to do her study on the working class by living the day to day life of a low wage worker and had great insight into their lives, except she limited herself by having added cash, a vehicle, and a rental deposit (Ehrenreich, B. 2001). After reading the first part of Ehrenreich’s book, and imagining what the low wage worker may think of the American economy I can truly believe they see the injustice between working classes rather than accepting the low paying life they are living. There truly is a huge difference between working classes, from how they work, get paid, treatment, feeling of self-worth, and everyday living

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