Essay On Minimum Wage In Nickel And Dimed

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days: Minimum Wage both show the struggles families on minimum wage go through. Both of them highlight some of the difficulties they face daily, however, they have differences in the dynamics of the experiment. Some of these similarities include the emotional, physical, and economic strain they had on the characters. While the differences of their experience are one-person experience versus a two-person experience and the duration of the experiment. Throughout Spurlock’s movie he and his girlfriend, Alex, have a difficult time emotional with the stress of living off minimum wage. There are many times where they feel like giving up on the experience and going back to their luxurious life. But, they knew if they quit before the end of thirty days the experiment would be a failure, so they persevered. There were also times throughout the film when Alex got emotional about not being able to buy as much as they felt they …show more content…
In Spurlock’s film we see first hand experience with economic troubles as well as statistics to back it up. Spurlock and Alex show us how they struggle through showing us their expenses and the amount of money they actually have. Many times, throughout the film we see that their amount of money is actually in the negatives especially when they have the emergency room visits. This shows just how trying emergencies can be on low wage workers. There are times in the film where Spurlock and Alex would like to splurge on something extra for themselves but then realize they need every penny. It is also represented in the film how difficult having children in this situation would be to support. At one point, they are looking for something fun to do but find out that most activities that are fun cost a decent amount of money. Ehrenreich also shows similar themes throughout her struggle