Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed' - Book Report/Review Example

Ehrenreich reveals that subsisting on minimum wage is possible, though just barely, and it is anything but desirable. One of the overriding themes of Nickel and Dimed is that it raises the validity of the importance for those who simply do not get the reality of the economic status of an enormous minority of Americans of coming to terms with what they spend so much time denying. Ehrenreich's understanding of this importance of this comes a result of the fact that she actually was forced to leave the realm of the oblivious; in her own particular case a career as a journalist with a Ph.

D in biology. She jettisoned this comfortable white-collar environment to enter into the world of unskilled and unfairly compensation low-level blue class worker. Upon leaving her relaxed lifestyles, she embarked upon a learning experience that would last several months as she journeyed from Florida to Maine to Minnesota. Along the way she slowly began to ascertain the fact that that people who are paid six to seven dollars an hour did not produce enough income for those who did not want to live outside of a home.

Ehrenreich lay down a strong structural foundation for her experimental foray into hands-on journalism reminiscent in a far different way to George Plimpton's famous 1960s journalistic experiments at making the Detroit Lions. The rules were simple: find a lower class, blue collar, take up residence in the least expensive location possible, and use only the money she made on the job and not her own savings. She began her experiment in Key West, where she got a rude education in the realities of low-wage-job applications.

What can be learned from Ehrenreich's book is something that even people who are aware of the reality of the economic situation may find eye-opening: very often the jobs that are available to the blue collar work force in American are not just bad jobs that don't allow them to support their families in a proper way, but they also humiliating and damaging to the self-esteem. It is very easy to understand the difficulties faced by the poor after reading this book, and in partnership with that it becomes much enraging to view how people less worthy of a good life are allowed to easily prosper under a system designed by and for those who will benefit the most.

The poor and the lower class are not treated on the same footing and the odds are so stacked against them that there really is very little viable opportunity for them to succeed; that may be why so many waste money on lotteries and inside gambling casinos. Upward social mobility is nothing more than a sick joke because it is practically impossible for them to find a job that will allow them to let them rise up the social ladder. For instance, even rising to the position of manager in a fast food restaurant will earn the average worker barely more than he was making on the hourly shift.

This also serves to reinforce the sense of the way that the treats those who working in jobs like Ehrenreich took. I have always