Nicklel and Dimed

In the book, "Nickel and Dimed", Barbara Ehrenreich explores an idea of leaving her middle class writing and trys to live the life of a, "low wage worker." Ms. Ehrenreich toils in each of the jobs that she works and feels the stress, anxiety, and fear that low wage employes experience from a day to day basis. Barbara makes an effort in this experiment to survive working jobs by herself. But as she became familiar with her co-workers she understood that multiple low wage workers living together struggled sometimes more so than herself. During her time working at the places she did, she found that the authoritative figure i.e. managers or owners were attempting to beat down the moral of the employes. To make obedient drones that didn't think and just worked. After going through all of this she better understood the matter of poverty. Ehrenreich believes that the government doesn't look at the issue of poor workers to well.
Question for discussion: number 15- I do believe that Americans have put somewhat excessive demands on the family unit. But, they put such demands on the family because the government programs designed to help are of little to no help. The government should step in and help but rarely it helps the situation in anyway to get better.