Nickel

Nickel and Dimed Notes Intro/Thesis: Journalist, Barbara Ehrenreich, in Nickel and Dimed, describes her personal experiences of working low-paying jobs and the struggles that come with it. Ehrenreich’s purpose was to determine the possibility of living off a minimum wage job. She adopts an objective tone in order to show her readers the harsh reality of the workers of the low-paying jobs, poverty is one of American society’s biggest problems, people are working full time yet still sink into…

Tamara: Good morning, this is Tamara Benson, host of Book Talk. On today’s show, I’m interviewing Alex Quentin, the author of the new book Unlucky Penny. Alex, could you tell us a little bit about the book? Alex: Thanks for having me on the show. To put it simply, Unlucky Penny is my attempt to convince the United States government to get rid of the penny. Tamara: That certainly seems like quite the undertaking! What inspired you to write this book? Alex: When I was young, I used to collect…

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass are both books that experience more than one “face” from the “Five Faces of Oppression” by Iris Young. The “ Five Faces of Oppression” include Exploitation( the act of using people's labors to produce profit while not contemplating them fairly). Marginalization ( the act of relegating or confining a group to a lower social standing or edge of society) . Powerlessness( the upper or…

Barbara Ehrenreich argues that those in the workforce of minimum wage face struggles that affect their life styles, however they fight back tooth and nail too overcome these situations. In chapter two of Nickel and Dimed Barbara declares that those who fall under the ethnicity of “white” have a much higher chance of obtaining a job compared to someone of color. While reading this chapter some struggles that minimum waged workers faced are: housing standards, being able to afford food and having…

In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich’s experiment to prove that fair wages, overtime pay, retirement funds, and health insurance are crucial for a person in this economy. She forced her to adapt to the lifestyle of the working-poor: how they live, eat, and performed in their daily lives. To exemplify the struggles endured in order to keep up with a society, where the rich get richer and poor get poorer as they travel with no way out form the bottomless pit that is the lower class. Many…

The Mennonite community of East Village has separated themselves from the outside world to keep their traditions and beliefs strict for its members and keep outsiders from interfering. Miriam Toews presents Nomi Nickel as the narrator to view the community of East Village from the perspective of an insider who recognizes issues and examines them. Toews’s writing, specifically from Nomi’s point of view, allows the audience to examine the culture from the insider’s standpoint. Their views and…

It is really easy to blame your financial difficulties on money. Yet what some people forget, is that this medium of exchange allowed us to create what we have today. Without something to use as currency there would be no society. A society consists of a group of people working together to create an orderly community. The creation of which would not be possible if the basic things that humans need are not satisfied. Money helps create stability by setting a certain value on all the commodities…

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote the book Nickel and Dimed, which was about her experience as being a low wage worker in the United States. The authors’ argument in the book, was that minimum wage workers are being treated unfairly by the higher class society in the United States. The purpose of her going through the experiment was to examine the way low wage workers able to live with the salary they are given, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?”(1). Ehrenreich wanted to see…

definitions are no longer valid. Thoreau’s Walden, penned in 1854 as a recount of his departure from ‘civilisation’, shows us the fallacy of working hard to improve your quality of life, only to have to work harder to emulate it. Ehrenreich’s struggles in Nickel and Dimed, published at the turn of the millennium, highlights the severe lack of opportunities that millions of Americans have access…

which sought to terminate welfare. Examining the act’s harm on the working class - and especially the poor working class - Barbara Ehrenreich lived for three years working low-wage jobs. By both taking on low-wage jobs and receiving no welfare, in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich learns about the physically and mentally tolling aspects of these jobs, the costs of living with little income, and the barriers to entry of these jobs. Because she must work long…