Nickel And Dimed: Theoretical Analysis

In the late 1990s, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover in three cities throughout the United States to perform various blue-collared jobs. Her goal was to see if a person could really survive on a minimum wage income. In her novel Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America she describes the experiences and obstacles she faced during the experiment. After reading her book in college, Adam Shepard disagreed with Ehrenreich’s views about the life of working class Americans, and he decided to design his own experiment. He wanted to see if someone could succeed after starting out with nothing. His memoir, Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream explains how he was able to make $5,000, and buy an apartment …show more content…
Barbara Ehrenreich found that a person could not live on the low wages blue-collar workers are paid. After completing her project she came to the conclusion, “it was uniformly assumed that a job was the ticket out of poverty and that the only thing holding back welfare recipients was their reluctance to get out and get one. I got one…but my track record in the survival department is far less admirable than my performance as a jobholder” (Ehrenreich 196). After performing various jobs throughout the country, she realized that even though she did not spend money on frivolous things, she still could not make ends meet. This combined with factors such as strict company rules, high rent rates, and a lack of jobs on the market makes it hard for a person to survive or grow with such little pay. Adam Shepard found that a person could be successful, as long as they work hard, have a positive attitude, and were willing to succeed. He learned from his project that, “There are plenty of ways to have fun, plenty of ways to look at our lives as more than just tolerable. All the while, we have to be more focused, keeping our eye on what we really want to do with our lives…” (Shepard 213). He was able to get a job, earn $5,000, and buy a car an apartment from only $25. He found that everyone has their own idea of the American Dream and methods of …show more content…
Ehrenreich believes that with the rise in poverty, the government should try to help the poor by reforming laws that make aspects like homelessness illegal, and creating ways to give them assistance. Ten years later, Ehrenreich reviewed the research she had done for the novel, and how low wages are still affecting people after the recession. Laws had been created, that essential made being poor illegal, “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…Most cities, for example, have ordinances designed to drive the destitute off the streets by outlawing…loitering, sleeping, or lying down” (Ehrenreich 234). Ehrenreich believes that the way to help the homeless and the poor is not to arrest them, but to create programs that will support them. Shepard also agrees that programs should be put in place to assist the lower class. Shepard believes that current welfare programs are not succeeding to helping people. He found a list of ways of how the government could improve upon the current system. One of the ways being to make housing more affordable, “The government must step up its commitment to clean, safe, affordable housing in new and innovative ways…Home ownership education programs for first-time