Summary Of The Working Poor Invisible In America

In the book of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich presents to readers an overall perspective on how the unskilled women to be forced to join the labor market after the American welfare reform on 1998. Interestingly, this presentation is actually based on Ehrenreich’s practical experiences. She participates into the lifestyle of the poor in the low-wage labor market in order to experiences and researches that living style as an “undercover journalist”. Moreover, Ehrenreich wants to find an answer for the question if she could survive and maintain her living with low wage just like the way “four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to make it on $6 or$7 an hour” (Nickel and Dimed, pg.1). In fact, three

He attacks the moral compass of society’s, and digs deep into the welfare situation and all of the stigmas attached to it. One of his

In David Shipler’s book “The Working Poor: Invisible in America” starts out describing what Earned Income Tax Credit is it’s a program to help people in poverty who are either liberals and conservatives. Providing a significant source of income once a year to help your down payments on a car, house, bills, debt, or other taxes. It seems to be a good program, but some government businesses sometimes mislead their claims and denying others access to certain benefits or rights. Certain people who have a hard time doing their taxes seek help, but tax prepares may charge high interest rates and fees to just use their services. For example, Evon Johnson who had a tax charge from the IRS for over $2,072.

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.

The impoverished worked for extremely low wages mainly because of major issues, such as a language barrier, that hindered their ability to find decent work in the United States. These individuals were being charged unrealistically high rent by the same people who paid them extremely low wages (Riis, Ch. 12). Riis’ is portraying poverty as being a tool that enables people to take advantage of others. Riis tell a story of a man who was blacksmith in is home land but do to his inability to speak English stops him from being able to practice his trade. He and his wife had no other choice but to work a cigar makers with his wife and son.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy or the “Crisis Strategy” was implemented, ultimately to accelerate or hasten the fall of capitalism within the United States government. The overall method of the strategy was to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading government bureaucracy with impossible demands. An overload of demands would eventually push the capitalistic society into a depression, an economic collapse. It was first proposed in 1966 by sociologist teachers at Columbia University, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. It was after the event of the 1965 riots, congregated in the black district, in Los Angeles California that the Cloward-Piven Strategy emerged.

In Holtzman Chapter 3, I found it interesting how the author points out that the poorest neighborhoods, example used being Compton, CA, will have more than triple the interest rates on a short term loan than that of a not so poor neighborhood. My reaction when reading this was one of sadness, but also one of anger as I thought of a few things. You would think first off that the poorest neighborhoods would have mostly state government housing (here in South Dakota it is called Section 8 housing) to where things like a home loan wouldn’t be needed, but then you would also think there would be rules on this lending practice that would make it illegal for someone to jack up the interest rates on a home? I also enjoyed reading the section where the author used different phrases from John Scalzi to bring home the point that we don’t always understand what the poor goes through, and sometimes maybe it is even hard for us to describe.

Carelessly, the working middle and the high class people always forget about what the poor working class has to do in life to survive. In a passage from the novel, The Working Poor Invisible In America, David Shipler compares the poor working class wages to the amount of food they are able to buy. Shipler is able to creatively inform the audience using description, exemplification, and cause and effect what the life a poor working class citizen does everyday.     David Shipler shapes an image in the minds of all of his readers with his selective word choice. As a result of not having the money to pay for food, parents are forced to let their children starve, and as a result those children start looking “listless”.

In the article “How I Discovered the Truth about Poverty” Barbara Ehrenreich gives her view in poverty and explains why she think Michael Harington’s book “The Other American” gives a wrong view on poverty. She explained that Harrington believes that the poor thought and felt differently and what divides the poor was their different “culture of poverty.” Ehrenreich goes on to explain on how the book that became a best seller caused so many bad stereotypes on the poor that by the Reagan era poverty was seen as “bad attitudes” and “faulty lifestyles” and not by the lack of jobs or low paying jobs. And they also viewed the poor as “Dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to “defer gratification,” or possibly even set an alarm clock.”

The working poor are those who occupy minimum wage or low wage jobs, often lacking prestige and power. This group of people commonly work part-time and are rarely employed at a job for long enough to establish economic security. Since many of these jobs are physically demanding, those in the working class face a greater risk of going to the hospital – a cost that this class generally cannot afford. Furthermore, although the working poor struggle with low wages, many of them fail to qualify for welfare programs, making their economic status especially unstable and causing them to live on the edge (Marger 157). They often live paycheck-to-paycheck and one unpredictable event such getting ill or being fired from a job may cause them to fall into

I earn $1.50 a day... our children, of course, are often very sickly... had to go without a meal...” He understood the hole himself and all other indigent persons were in and why they were in it. He recognized that the United States government and industrial powers were responsible for his never ending cycle of penury, and in his concluding statement he claimed that “They are doing everything of that kind to crush down the poor people - the poor operatives there.” Which henceforth manifested the maltreatment of the destitute individuals and the lack of justice. The poor were not the only individuals who were mistreated in American society, which was also entirely and unfortunately unexpected by incoming settlers.

The novel, The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives by Sasha Abramsky is about how he traveled the United States meeting the poor. The stories he introduces in novel are articles among data-driven studies and critical investigations of government programs. Abramsky has composed an impressive book that both defines and advocates. He reaches across a varied range of concerns, involving education, housing and criminal justice, in a wide-ranging view of poverty 's sections. In considering results, it 's essential to understand how the different problems of poor families intermingle in mutual reinforcement.

The author wants the reader to continously think about what poverty means to her, such as “Poverty is being tired” in paragraph 3, “Poverty is dirt” in paragraph 4, and “Poverty is looking into a black future.” in paragraph 10. This reminds the audience that not everyone suffers from poverty in the same way. For the author, poverty is having to take care of family when all the odds are against you, and this is what gives the reader a perfect understanding of it. As stated in the passage, “Listen to me.

The poverty dilemma has been one of the greatest phenomenon that our society has seen over the past 40 years and it became one of the most important factors of political problems. Poverty has many faces, some people define it as the lack of money or food, and others define it as feeling unwanted in the society. On a macro level, a nation called poor when the most of its population falls under the poverty line and here where the author Garrett Hardin enter the scene with his article lifeboat ethics. He simile the nations with the lifeboats as both of them has a limited capacity. Garrett Hardin was an ecologist who were much warned about the human overpopulation and its results .Hardin received a B.S. in zoology from the University of Chicago

If the people around you have a similar situation poverty and wealth vague concept. There is only poverty or wealth relationship with a known amount or expected. Poverty occurs in all races and all nations . The concept of the middle class , as a social phenomenon of this century , a large section . Defined proportion of poor people who suffer the Poverty among generations of different situations of poverty.