1. Read the article. Consider the author's tone, structure of the essay, and your personal reaction.
2. Please add an intelligent comment (minimum 3 sentences) in response to the linked article from the NY Times. Be sure to reference specifics from the article.3. Optional: Comment on a classmates post in a second post (minimum 3 sentences)
*Use only your first name, last initial and class period.
Barbara Ehrenreich says "Nationally, according to Kaaryn Gustafs... “applying for welfare is a lot like being booked by the police.” There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. The ostensible goal is to prevent welfare fraud, but the psychological impact is to turn poverty itself into a kind of crime." Meaning that being poor automatically allows people to assume that you are you 'less than' or guilty. Basically, society degrades the lower class. Ehrenreich goes on to say "The most shocking thing I learned from my research on the fate of the working poor in the recession was the extent to which poverty has indeed been criminalized in America." This also describes how "constant suspicions" of drug use and stealing are highly associated with the low wadge workplace. She also says, "when you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation." because low wadge workers are treated like criminals by default.
ReplyDeleteRemi S.
9/23/14
Food is another expenditure that has proved vulnerable to hard times, with the rural poor turning increasingly to “food auctions,” which offer items that may be past their sell-by dates. Food is another expenditure that has proved vulnerable to hard times, with the rural poor turning increasingly to “food auctions,” which offer items that may be past their sell-by dates.
ReplyDeleteKatey Y.
Ignore the above post, most of my response was cut off.
DeleteIn her follow-up to Nickle and Dimed, Ehrenreich uses a more concentrated tone. In the original book, I felt she was focused more towards herself and her own needs than she was on exposing the realities of poverty to wealthy Americans. Although the article was sectioned off, some of the segments seemed to ramble on and stray from the topic indicated by their headers. However, the portion on nutrition really intrigued me. Barbara states, “Food is another expenditure that has proved vulnerable to hard times, with the rural poor turning increasingly to “food auctions,” which offer items that may be past their sell-by dates.” I had never heard of a food auction before reading this article. It’s really sad that some people have to buy expired food because they can’t afford good food. Although many processed foods are safe to consume past their expiration dates, produce generally isn’t good to consume while it’s on the way out. For many Americans, proper nutrition is not an option.
Katey Y.
In this article, I feel like Ms. Ehrenreich was a lot less self –centered than she appeared in Nickel and Dimed. She gave more statistics and she didn’t speak much of herself throughout the article, which I appreciated. Her tone was still informative like it was in the book, but she was not very snarky or arrogant like in her previous story. I was appalled by all of the horrible things she had mentioned throughout this article, yet the story about the homeless Vietnam veteran really stuck out to me. This man, Mr. Al Szekeley, was shot in his spine, which left him paralyzed, and could not afford to live in his own home. He lived in a homeless shelter, like any other homeless man or woman would do, and was then arrested for being homeless because he was shot in action while trying to protect our country. Also, the instance of the Food not War group who gave free vegan meals to the homeless of Las Vegas. These caring benefactors of society were arrested due to “passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places”. It is very sad that the United States had to become a place like this, and I respect Barbara for shedding light on such serious matter.
ReplyDeleteMy head started to spin when I thought about how horrible and frightening it would be to live in the cycle of poverty and clashing with the law. If you lost your job, you'd apply for government aid and then try to find a job- as long as you have a car. But what if your car breaks down? You can't pay to fix it, but if you drive it when something is wrong with it, you'll get a fine that you can't pay. Or even if your car works, there isn't enough time in the day to accomplish all that government aid programs expect you to. Ehrenreich shares the story of the Parentes family, who went through all of this in their quest to regain their past financial security. To add to the struggle of the poor, no one trusts or empathizes with them. Kristen Parentes recalled from her experience with government aid that "the caseworkers 'treat you like a bum. They act like every dollar you get is coming out of their own paychecks.'" Why does our society treat people this way? How can people cling so tightly to their "hard-earned money" and look down on those who "haven't worked as hard" if they know how those people are living? I think we too often dehumanize the poor so that they are just a lazy, resource-absorbing entity that needs to be dealt with rather than actual people who once had dreams like ours and are now forced to fight for expired food. Or maybe they never had dreams because this is all they've ever known, and the system never gave them a reason to believe that, as humans, they deserve better.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the way society can dehumanize the poor as if they are another species is appalling. We cannot begin to help the poor if we do not first empathize and destroy the stigma surrounding the lower class.
DeleteThroughout “Nickel and Dimed,” Barbara had a very specific tone to her writing. The book was rather self-centered, while this article took a different standpoint. It was almost as though a completely different person had written the two pieces. “Nickel and Dimed” was published in 2001, and since then, “…The short answer is that things have gotten much worse, especially since the economic downturn that began in 2008.” When Ehrenreich was doing the research for her novel, the economy was good. Now, imagine the hardships that people will face seven years later, when the economy has started to fall. There is no way to stop poverty, but to reduce it, the world needs to stop doing things that make people poor.
ReplyDeleteEllie B.
After reading this article, I began to realize that I have taken many things for granted in my life. These things, including an education, a home, and meals, I couldn’t imagine not having. Sometimes I complain, but now I understand that I truly have no need to be complaining since there are so many people out there in America that have it so much worse. For instance, in the article, it described a family in Delaware that turned to the government for aid when the father was no longer able to work his job due to an injury. However, even after they applied for aid, nothing happened for six weeks. At school, the daughter was asked to write out a wish they would present to a genie and hers “was for her mother to find a job because there was nothing to eat in the house…” In my mind, most kids would be wishing for new toys or games, and it was heart breaking to see that even young children, like Brianna, were experiencing the hardships of poverty. Overall, I feel that Barbara Ehrenreich was much less blunt and pretentious in the article as she was in the book. She was more informative and included a variety of facts and statistics. To me, I liked how she simply told the story of the people that she interviewed and did not include much of her own opinion on their circumstances.
ReplyDeleteCarolyn C.
After reading this article, I realized that there are a huge amount of hardships faced by “those in the bottom third of the income distribution” that were not mentioned in Nickel and Dimed. The hardship that struck me the most was the endless cycle that the poor found themselves in. For example, the Parentes, a family who was hit badly by the 2008 recession, tried to receive assistance from the “Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.” (TANF). But, in order to qualify for help, they “were each expected to apply for 40 jobs a week, although their car was on its last legs and no money was offered for gas, tolls, or babysitting.” They could not apply for jobs without a working car and gas needed to power that car, and they could not fix their car and pay for gas without a job. This catch 22 that the working class finds themselves in does not extend only to financial situations, but legal ones as well. According to the article, “In what has become a familiar pattern, the government defunds services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Generate no public-sector jobs, then penalize people for falling into debt.” It angers me that the government's way of "helping the poor" is to put them into a situation that is virtually impossible to get out of, then punishing them for being in that situation.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the book "Nickel and Dimed", Barbara appeared to have a very pretentious tone, however this article lacked this and focused more on the evidence that was collected from her experiment. Throughout the book, it is easy to get frustrated with some of Barbara's insensitive comments, but the article summarizes that there is a lot to be taken away from her experience. It has made the public more aware of the challenging lives of the poor as stated in the article that, "29% of American families living in what could be more reasonably defined as poverty, meaning that they earned less than a barebones budget covering housing, child care, health care, food, transportation, and taxes -- though not, it should be noted, any entertainment, meals out, cable TV, Internet service, vacations, or holiday gifts." The article brings the situation to a more personal level, making the reader feel more sympathetic about the hardships endured by the poor. The article definitely made me appreciate my life and has put my own personal needs into perspective.
ReplyDeleteSomething that Ehrenreich brought up this time that she did not in the book was the existence of racial profiling. It's all too true that race is a huge factor in discrimination, and being a poor POC gives you a huge disadvantage. A result of capitalism is that we look down on those who have less than us. We tell ourselves that they're living in poverty because they're not intelligent, they're lazy, and they're too dependent on the government. That's what we tell ourselves to make us feel better about them existing. After reading the book and the update to the book, we understand that this is not true. Of course there are people who get welfare because they truly are too lazy to get a job. However, there are a lot of people who are unbelievably rich and are just as lazy; some have money because they inherited it. However, we view rich people as hardworking, intelligent people while we view (as a nation) poor people as lazy and uneducated. It's really difficult to change these views that are have become a social norm, but given time and help from powerful people it is possible to turn a belief around. She gives some helpful advice for adopting a new perspective: "But at least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down." Most of us are able to recover from something like a malfunction of a car or getting the flu, but we have to remember that that could be the difference of having dinner or a place to live for someone else.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of making poverty a crime, which Barbra mentioned in the article, there are other ways that this is accomplished than through demeaning welfare practices. In many places, anti-homelessness legislation is taking hold. Some ways this legislation is criminalizing poverty is making it illegal to beg, sleep on the streets, and by removing the homeless from certain parts of a town or city to protect property values. In addition to the criminalization of the homeless, measures known as anti-homeless spikes have been taken. These can take many shapes including jagged rocks stuck in railings or sidewalks to prevent people from sitting, standing or loitering on them, to metal spikes similar to the ones used to keep birds from nesting on rooftops. I think it’s very important that she addressed this as it’s something that still plagues us three years later.
ReplyDeleteThis article from our friend Barbara once again highlights the inequalities in our modern society. The public ordinance which claims it is "fair" because if someone is "lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, [it's] a violation of the ordinance." But everyone knows who that rule really targets. I'll drop dead in surprise the day I find a millionaire sleeping under a bridge because that's what they need to do to survive. By constantly targeting the poor, creating this hostile attitude towards them we're creating a system that does not really offer them any assistance at all.
ReplyDeleteThis is much more concise, powerful, and easy to read than Nickel and Dimed was as it doesn't waste words or space describing things that are fairly irrelevant to the situation of the poor and provides more relative examples as the timeline here is very close to the present. That said, I think we should find it very disturbing to know that when Eric Sheptock asks "They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless?” he is referring to something that actually happened in D.C. Not to mention that fact that this homeless man in particular was a United States military veteran should be repulsive to anyone who believes that the police are for the good of everyone in the city. The poor just need a little help to get back on their feet is what our nation's leaders have been telling us, but what is actually happening is akin to forcing a surgeon to save someone's life and then torturing that person back into critical condition repeatedly just because they were injured by something that they couldn't control. If more people were to read this article, there would probably be a rather sizable protest occurring as it is not likely that any of the issues that Barbara pointed out in her article have been resolved.
ReplyDeleteStas B.
I found this article extremely powerful, and I greatly appreciated the tone and style that Ehrenreich used while writing it. As many people have been saying, it contrasted pretty significantly with Nickel and Dimed; it seemed to me far more comprehensive and informative, and focused a lot on the real struggles of other people, which N&D lacked. I also really appreciated Ehrenreich's mention of the struggles that POCs go through. Anything that is hard for a poor white person is much harder for a poor black or Hispanic person. While reading that passage, I could only think of the events in Ferguson. Ms. Ehrenreich talks a little bit about the criminalization of poverty, and it seems to me that there's a similar criminalization in simply being black. When people like Michael Brown can be shot in the street essentially only for the color of his skin, how can someone say that America is equal? It's terrifying and sad to me the bias that America has towards the lower class and minorities in general. Although we've made some real steps towards improvement, there's still a long way for us to go.
ReplyDeleteI think that this article did a very good job of expressing all of the positive things that Nickel and Dimed offered. In class, all everyone seemed to talk about was how Ehrenreich's tone throughout the book was not what it should have been. For me, she really made up for all of the negative things that I had said about the book by what she wrote in this article. She did a much better job of stating how much it actually affected the real world and how people reacted to it. This article changed how I feel about this book a lot.
ReplyDeleteI found this article extremely interesting and was amazed by the new perspective that it gave me. Impoverished families are often viewed as being lazy, and unwilling to work for a better life. Many upper and middle class residents are angered by the subsidies they receive from the government and believe that as long as they are receiving welfare they will have no motivation to push themselves. In reality, these views are shockingly inaccurate. Both the article and the book make it clear that there are simply not enough jobs and rent is far too high. Many citizens are caught in a tiresome struggle in which they are constantly looking for a decent job or any means of bettering themselves. Many are far less fortunate as us, and have been raised in poverty. Thus, they spend their entire adulthood trying to provide a better future for their families. It is insane to think that there is such a vast population of people who are unable to obtain even the most basic necessities. Meanwhile, we so absorbed in the latest technologies and trends that we forget to appreciate the simple pleasures that have always been so plentiful to us. We are incredibly lucky.
ReplyDeleteThis article, in my opinion, was better written then the novel, Nickel and Dime. Throughout the article Barbara explained the facts about living in poverty unlike how the book was more about her. The tone in Nickel and Dime was conceded and selfish. However in this article the tone was factual, which made me appreciate the book more.
ReplyDeleteAbby A
period 5
With all the facts and statistics Ehrenreich presents, it is disappointing that the poverty situation hasn't gotten better. I found it shocking that the government (albeit unintentionally?) keeps the poor, well poor. There's that cycle people can go through: little money to pay for housing (even with aid), possible homelessness makes people go to shelters/streets, possible arrest for ridiculous "crimes", longer stay in jail because of lack of money, getting out of jail drains what little money left, look for resources to fulfill their basic needs again. It seems almost impossible for one who gets caught in this to get out of it. For people that have a family to raise, I can only imagine the extra stress one goes through having to worry about the lives of other humans' wellbeing while trying to avoid falling into the government's pitfalls.
ReplyDeleteMeredith J. Period 5
In this article I agree a lot more with Barbara with the things she says rather than in the book. She had a much different tone in this article than “Nickel and Dimed” which in my opinion was better in this article. This article really changed how I felt about the book because her tone in the book was so harsh against the lower class and how awful it was to be part of it. In this article its really saying how the lower class does have it hard and how awful these hardships are and that we shouldn’t be complaining when we have so much and they have so little. This article really showed how much we take for granted in our life and we complain over the little things but for the most part we don’t have to worry about maybe not being able to put dinner on the table we just assume we are having dinner. Some of the families that Barbara talked about do have to worry about these things and they are children wishing for food and hoping that their mother will find a job so they can get food, when children should be worrying more about who they are going to sit next to on the bus to school. I think that overall this article was very well written and more informative about what is going on with the lower class.
ReplyDeleteShannon F
I thought that the article was really interesting in a way where it gave you a whole new perspective on the book. Throughout our class discussions no one really tried to pick out the good things that the book had to offer and could show us, but the article shows the reader some of the more positive aspect of the novel Nickel and Dimed. I thought for the most part the tone in Nickel and Dimed was kind of boring and repetitive, i understood the message of the book but i thought Barbra did a bad job explaining how difficult it is to be lower class. I thought the article did a good job relating the issues from the book to real world problems that seemed less pretentious.
ReplyDeleteJessie O
While reading the book, I believed that this was the way the blue-collared worker today was treated. But, I didn't factor in that with the decline of the economy around 2008 that the conditions of the poor could have become much worse. I felt like Barbara ,when writing her book, focused more on her self and how great she was. I got the same feeling while reading the article. Barbara, I feel, wrote the beginning of this article just to brag about how great her book was and how much of a impact the book was on society. This displeased me until she started writing about how the conditions of the poor have gotten much worse now a days. At that point, I feel the article was very moving, eye-opening and brought up many good points. I think the poor don't have a strong voice in our society and if they did then their conditions would start improving. So I think we need to move into a direction of educating and informing the public of these hard conditions the poor have to endure.
ReplyDeleteOwen B.
I liked Barbara's technique in analyzing the workers of today's low wage jobs. Unlike her book, she interviewed the workers to grasp a better understanding of what they're going through in today's economy.
ReplyDeleteThis direct approach worked well, and showed the differences and similarities in our economy today and the economy when she wrote her book. I think this technique would have worked well in her book, and I think she should have used it to better her book.
-Rome M.