Nickel and Dimed

In the book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich, an educated middle class women, decides to go under cover and see what its like to be part of the low class workers. With each job she found it very hard to make ends meet, especially in the area of housing. The low income housing that is offered is still fairly high priced or very uncomfortable and quite dirty. Ehrenreich did not, however, have the option of sharing rent with any family like many of the low class workers she met seemed to do since it would lower the cost of rent because it was being split between more people. Ehrenreich also tried working two jobs to make ends meet but soon found this was not an easy task. Working two jobs makes the days even longer than they already were with just one and the added physical pain which came with most lower class jobs, she found it to be almost impossible to do. However several low class workers somehow make it work. By taking the undercover role as a low class worker Ehrenreich seemed to find that all lower class workers are extremely hard workers just trying to make ends meet, but just arent getting enough pay or medical benefits like they should. In her concluding chapter she argues that the pay for these workers needs to be raised and the housing costs need to be lowered because the welfare reform is not seeming to be very beneficial at all.

Question #14. The workers that are doing the low class hard jobs should recieve benefits just like everyone else that works because they are doing painful jobs and need the medical benefits for sure. Everything else would just be an added bonus and they deserve it for how hard they work. An increased salary would help make the lack of benefits seem better but I still dont think it makes it fair because that extra money is going to likely go to medical stuff that they could just get from their jobs as a benefit.