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.