Poverty In Chris Gardner's The Pursuit Of Happyness

The cause of death is usually diarrhea, but behind it is acute deficits of necessary micronutrients. About 2 million children die from pneumonia. Antibiotics to treat it cost 27 cents a dollar. Their families lack them. In total, 18 million people die each year from poverty-related causes.

First, over 700 million dollars is being lost per year just because of the time wasted counting pennies! Imagine you want to buy a nice TV that costs a thousand dollars and you’ve been saving up pennies for awhile now and you think you have enough. You get to the checkout aisle and you sit there for 30 minutes counting all your pennies making a bunch of people angry because they have to wait in line behind you while you count them all. You could get out of that store way faster if you counted nickels or quarters instead of all those pennies. Also, according to

Additionally, in Document O, Andrew Carnegie reduces the worker's pay wage by 20% in order to donate more money for his own selfish needs. With workers already receiving low wages per day, Carnegie decides to decrease the wage even more to between $1.12 and $1.80 per day and rarely $4/$8 per day. Finally, Andrew Carnegie was selfish. In Document I, it shows that while iron & steel workers work longer than machine shop workers, machine shop workers received more than iron & steel workers. Andrew Carnegie’s daily wage was about $92,000, meaning he could’ve paid his workers more but refuse to.

Those homeless shelters who are supposed to protect the homeless are unnecessary and costly. PBS SoCal states that a homeless shelter costs “on average, $1800 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.” (PBS SoCal Newshour) Most homeless people do not even have $1800 to begin with, making homeless housing projects a waste of money. Because the homeless could not afford the housing projects or the shelters, they often resort to cheaper options like temporary hotel or motel stays. Motel stays however, still affects the economy because according to the book Invisible Nation by Richard Schwind, “The motel stays are costing the state about $58 million annually.” (Schwind 85) So either way, homelessness still affects the economy in a negative way because the homeless cannot afford to live in shelters and homeless housing projects so they stay in motels. This makes the housing projects and shelters a waste of money and it also drains money from

In Raymond Carver’s memoir there was income inequality that can be relevant to today. For example, in Caver’s memoir, he stated “He had a job and a family. These were his salad days” (Raymond: 7 paragraph, last two lines). He meant that they were struggling economically because they only had enough money to buy a head of lettuce. During 1933, the average family income dropped to $1,500, less than 1929 which was $2,300 and many families lost their savings as a lot of banks collapsed (Bryson).

(TIMES) So even if an athlete were to get paid it would still leave them "dead broke." "Students are not professional athletes who are paid salaries. They are receiving access to a college education through their participation in sports, for which they earn scholarships to pay tuition, fees, room and board, and other allowable expenses." (TIMES) In most cases premier athletes only come for one year, until they can leave and possibly make millions, I think most college students would be alright with being broke for a year if they knew they had that type of fortune in their

One of the most important consequences of getting lot of unwanted donations is decrease revenue for charitable endeavors. The Salvation Army relies on good donations. If the company does not get good donations, the company have difficulty raising enough money for its rehabilitation programs. This force the Salvation Army to spend thousands of dollars every month on dumping that could use in charitable services. Farkas reports that waste removal now costs Goodwill half-a-million dollars a year(..).

[2] Poverty may be defined as either absolute or relative.’ Never the less, it’s ironic how in the 21st century we prize ourself for being progressive when almost half of us - over 3 billion people - can’t even conjure up what life is like beyond ‘the poverty trap’ they are in. We prize ourselves, when one out of every two children is poor. Can you imagine growing up as one of the 640 million kids whom have no adequate shelter, let alone a place to call home? Or the 400 million to whom safe drinking water is simply a figment of their imagination? Or maybe the 270 million who have no means of getting health care?

One of the most blatant illusion examples that is seen as reality in The Great Gatsby involves the main character actually; Mr. Gatsby himself. James Gatz or Jay Gatsby, what most people know him as is a rich man hailing from a very nonrich family in the midwest, North Dakota. He was bothered by the fact that he lived in poverty all his life to such great extent in which he decided to drop out of St. Olaf College in Minnesota after only a couple weeks; he was shameful towards the janitorial job he was forced to take in order to pay the tuition for the school. In Chapter 4, Gatsby tells Nick, “I’ll tell you God’s truth…I am the son of some wealth people in the middle-west [San Francisco].” As a result, the truth of his family background is a definite example of the false reality Jay portrays. Another illusion Gatsby deliberately makes people believe is real; is his rise to wealth.

People stopped using banks. Millions of people lost all their savings when many banks ran out of funds and closed. Your father and mother are among several million persons who have lost their jobs. Your family has no money to buy food because the banks. People began losing money, and were forced to sell their stocks at much lower prices.