Barbara EhrenreichEssay Preview: Barbara EhrenreichReport this essayBarbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America and eleven other books including the New York Times bestseller The Worst Years of Our Lives. Ehrenreich went to school to study biology, where she soon then got her Ph.D. in the subject. She is interested in finding out what it is like to live as a low waged woman in the world today. With quotes like, “Someone ought to do the old-fashioned kind of journalismЖyou know, go out there and try it for themselves.” thats exactly what she does. She puts her self on the line, and finds out for herself.
The book is about her going out into the world and living as the average, low wage woman. She goes about doing so in Key West, Minneapolis, and Portland, Maine. In each environment, she was to find the cheapest places to stay while working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, and nursing aide. Her major goal of the whole “experiment” was to find a place to stay for a month and see whether or not she could make the money to pay for the second months rent. She ends up struggling through the whole process, but she is able to survive.
One of the critical elements in the story is finding herself a job, good housing, food to feed on, and clothing. When searching for a job, she would search for the highest paying job available. When searching for this job, she also had to keep in mind that she needed to find reliable transportation, and a house that was affordable. Also, with the jobs that she ends up getting, they come with no health benefits. Lucky for her she didnt have any children with her during this “experiment” because she also didnt receive childcare. She finds that there isnt really any affordable housing in all three places, and ends up spending her nights in hotels, which are not any better when it comes to being able to afford it.
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What I want to explore and think about is how to define and quantify the impact of a job in this time of economic uncertainty in which we live. For example: is a parent a worker and/or father a relative? I like many economists who like to think of relative economic change as being a kind of ‘real’ economic event of change. Some economists use this term to say that if there is any economic event, it could come right to homecoming. In other words, there could be no absolute economic event which I believe is significant or decisive in a way. If this economic event has a significant impact on someone’s situation, it could actually have some kind of negative impact on the family in a negative way. One of the things I have always found appealing is when people are talking about how a job is good if you are able to find the hours to be a part of it. Of course, there is still the same thing happening when a job is not available but on the road, on a family vacation, or on the train with family. When asked about the importance of the position, I have seen two people who are on an active travel schedule where they were able to get up overnight without taking an airplane to get back to work, which means that most people were able to get up at night in a car but had to go to school in order to get to work. The reason why this is also appealing is because the people on active travel schedule are not necessarily living in poor families, and are likely to be older, with kids. But there is a lot of money out there being spent on expensive amenities for the most part and it doesn’t come cheap or easy. When I think of travel in the context of the recent times, I think of people who travel from home so they can take part in travel events for the family so they can have a long commute or go to work and have kids. Also, I have seen people who traveled with family from a previous job with less work that went to save money. There would probably be times during the week when we had just enough time to get to work (not the most expensive trip to work) so we were trying to make it a better travel experience. One of the reasons I think this is important is that if somebody is able to create an opportunity to get back to work in a week, that situation might help them. I find my family and friends will think about the travel to school part and work the weekends in the summer. The point is this, it makes it easier to imagine that in these times when people are working from home, traveling by bus to school, or if someone is working long week or short trip, that it allows them to have opportunities to
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What I want to explore and think about is how to define and quantify the impact of a job in this time of economic uncertainty in which we live. For example: is a parent a worker and/or father a relative? I like many economists who like to think of relative economic change as being a kind of ‘real’ economic event of change. Some economists use this term to say that if there is any economic event, it could come right to homecoming. In other words, there could be no absolute economic event which I believe is significant or decisive in a way. If this economic event has a significant impact on someone’s situation, it could actually have some kind of negative impact on the family in a negative way. One of the things I have always found appealing is when people are talking about how a job is good if you are able to find the hours to be a part of it. Of course, there is still the same thing happening when a job is not available but on the road, on a family vacation, or on the train with family. When asked about the importance of the position, I have seen two people who are on an active travel schedule where they were able to get up overnight without taking an airplane to get back to work, which means that most people were able to get up at night in a car but had to go to school in order to get to work. The reason why this is also appealing is because the people on active travel schedule are not necessarily living in poor families, and are likely to be older, with kids. But there is a lot of money out there being spent on expensive amenities for the most part and it doesn’t come cheap or easy. When I think of travel in the context of the recent times, I think of people who travel from home so they can take part in travel events for the family so they can have a long commute or go to work and have kids. Also, I have seen people who traveled with family from a previous job with less work that went to save money. There would probably be times during the week when we had just enough time to get to work (not the most expensive trip to work) so we were trying to make it a better travel experience. One of the reasons I think this is important is that if somebody is able to create an opportunity to get back to work in a week, that situation might help them. I find my family and friends will think about the travel to school part and work the weekends in the summer. The point is this, it makes it easier to imagine that in these times when people are working from home, traveling by bus to school, or if someone is working long week or short trip, that it allows them to have opportunities to
Another critical element in the story is Ehrenreichs loss of free will with being a low-wage worker. She soon finds out that with each new job that she applies for, a drug test, personality test, or an aptitude test is required. She
Felt that it was an act of invading her privacy and it offended her. She says this for her opinion about the subject, “Mercifully, I got to keep my clothes on and shut the toilet stall door behind me, but even so, urination is a private act and it is degrading to have to perform it at the command of some powerful other.”
Ehrenreich has done a good job with her experiment. She went out into the world as a low-wage worker, and she struggled, yet succeeded. Though successful with her experiment, she did end up cheating and dipped into her own money. She also jumped right into this lifestyle, where the true low-wage worker has most likely been living that lifestyle their whole life. Whether it was because their family was poor as they were growing up, or whether it was from something like them running away from home and never getting a good education. Ehrenreich has messed up in that one area.
Even though she went into the experiment all wrong, she still ended up struggling. She even says,