Nickel And Dimed

In Barbara Ehrenreich's nonfiction bestseller, Nickel and Dimed, she decides the best way to get a quality article is to live in her writing. She travels to Florida, Maine, and Minnesota to experience life as a low wage worker. Shr finds that, when conversing with coworkers who have lives of less luxury, there isn't much difference in conversation topics. The first jobs that Barbara worked she was only able to handle for a few weeks due to the physical demand on them. At the end of each job, she usually tells a few other workers that she is actually only working for the prupose of writing this; to her surprise they never seemed a bit shocked at the news and were caught up in their own low wage situations.

ND from Michael Tigges

8/23/11

Nickled & Dimed

In Nickled and Dimed, the author and narrator, Barbara Ehrenreich gives up a live of mediocre luxury to explore the life of a minimum wage employee. My perceptions of the blue-collar Americans were transformed in this book due to the fact that I always thought they lived a decent life. I was unable to relate to this, as I've always lived in a sort of luxury, but it made me feel sympathetic toward the blue collar minimum wage workers. My notations of poverty have transformed drastically, as before reading Nickled and Dimed, poverty to me was literally just not having a place to sleep at night. I've never had to give a tip, but this book has made me believe that that could make a waiter's day, and that you should put thought into the tip you give your waiter. In terms of sales people and maids, I think this book increased the respect I have for them in regards to line of work. It's a hectic job with it's perks that must all be learned to thrive in the job.

In terms of the writing style, I didn't enjoy Ehrenreich's style of writing. I think she struggled to use sophisticated language when regarding her life as opposed to the minimum wage life, in an attempt to contrast the two. I feel this was not beneficial to the book, and that the word choice did not effectively contrast the two worlds.

ND from Kinse Doerr

Nickel and Dimed

            The novel Nickel and Dimed, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a documentary on living with a  low-wage in America.  Ehrenreich travels to three locations, challenging the opportunities of making a living with  minimum wage. She struggles  both physically and mentally along the way. Ehrenreich realizes that it is very difficult to support just herself, let alone a family. She no longer sees people as rich or poor, but sees everybody as real people, all with real problems.

Question 17: After reading Nickel and Dimed, do you think that having a job-any job- is better than no job at all?

After reading this book, I still think that having any job is better than no job at all. Even before reading this book, I could tell you that having a job is better than not.  Obviously it’s better to at least support yourself a little than giving up and not trying at all. You should always have a job, because without one, you’ll just be lazy person who gave up.

ND from Ben Jensen

Nickel and Dimed Blog

Barbara Ehrenreich sets out to prove that low wage workers cannot live comfortable or meaningful lives by abandoning her comfortable white-collar job and taking blue-collar jobs in three different cities. She encounters several problems; many of her supervisors do not really care about the workers under them and enter into selfish vindictive behavior. Another problem she encounters is the availability and affordability of safe housing. She also describes the working conditions as horrible, and the tasks she is assigned as degrading. Ehrenreich says that she now understands and can empathize with the lower class and the struggles they go through on a daily basis. She argues that the wages paid to workers are not enough to live on, and that the Unites States government despite its wealth does not help out the poor with effective public transportation, or subsidized housing (pg. 214). This premise is blatantly and obviously false, the U.S. government offers many ways for the poor to defray some of the cost of living. Food stamps, unemployment benefits, welfare, AND defrayed cost public transportation to name a few.

Question 17:

Having a job, any job, is ten times better for the individual and for society in general than allowing a person to live off welfare or some other government benefit. The only way to eliminate poverty is to not give people money; this only creates a culture of entitlement while not contributing to the national/international economy at all. The way to eliminate poverty is to have every able-bodied adult working in a job.  This goal is certainly not served by allowing an individual to stay on welfare indefinitely. This book certainly angered me, but not in the way Ms. Ehrenreich meant it too.  It is unfortunate that we were forced to read this book in a high school composition class, Ms. Ehrenreich is ignorant of basic economics and obviously biased toward socialist economics. Not to mention she is entirely unqualified to enter into a discussion on economics (a la the “Evaluation” chapter) She has a Ph.D. in cellular biology, not economics. Barbara Ehrenreich does not trust the free market to create wealth and benefit the poor. The only way for the poor to be benefitted is by the creation of wealth which takes place most efficiently when free people are permitted to bargain and negotiate freely with respect to their labor and the goods and services they wish to purchase.

ND from Keegan Gallery

Nickel and Dimed Blog

In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich dives into the world of low-wage jobs and poverty, trying to discover if impoverished people had any secrets to getting by on minimum wage jobs. She faces many struggles on her journey through three different cities. These struggles are both mental and physical and are noted in all three cities. In Minneapolis she faces a couple of mental struggles. She had to do monotonous work in the ladies’ department at Wal-Mart for sometimes eight to nine hours straight. She also had many horrible managers who were only concerned with keeping the business running and making money. In Minneapolis her manager called many pointless meetings and reinforced not to talk to other employees on the job. In Portland, Maine she found her work as a maid to be both physically demanding, requiring a lot of bending over and carrying things, and degrading to her. She also found out that many of her co-workers are just barely scraping by. She describes the situations of many of her co-workers such as Gail who lives in a room with a roommate for 250 dollars a week. Or the Czechoslovakian workers who live in an extremely crowded flat with not even enough beds for all of them. Ehrenreich soon found out that her co-workers had no secrets to getting by other than continually grind out every single day and just dealing with your situation.

Reader’s Guide Question #8

The goodwill and generosity displayed by Ehrenreich’s colleagues was extremely surprising to me. These people are struggling with payments every month/week/day. They’re working extremely long hours and oftentimes two jobs. To display generosity with that amount of stress put on you is extremely impressive. This generosity shocked me.

MC from Andrea Arthofer

Blog Question for The Martian Chronicles:

The colonization of Mars was very similar to the colonization of America in how it was first colonized and the effects of colonization. For example, it took a few expeditions for each place to actually be settled. Once the new lands were explored, the motivation to come was very similar. It started out with coming for more work opportunities in both places. Then, there was a drive for freedom; in America it was for religious freedom and at Mars, African-Americans from the south went to escape the prejudices of the white men. Another similarity is the high amount of people traveling to these places in a short period of time. In the Martian Chronicles this was compared to a ‘swarm of locusts.’

The after-effects of the settlement were similar as well. When first settled, new people brought fatal diseases to the natives. Along with diseases, culture was brought with the settlers, such as the style of towns built. Also, when white men came to America, they named many geographical things after settlers, removing the descriptive titles given by Native Americans. This happened again when Americans went to Mars. For these reasons, the colonization of Mars and America were very similar.