Barbara Ehrenreich Critique

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In the article “How I Discovered the Truth About Poverty,” journalist Barbara Ehrenreich examines how wealthy Americans’ view of people in poverty have changed. Her study of these changing views revolves around the book The Other America by Michael Harrington (Ehrenreich 607). The book brought to light the fact that America has an unprecedented portion of its population living in poverty, but also comforted the middle class and wealthy by offering the idea that the poor were somehow culturally different. Ehrenreich delivers a fairly unbiased article about how the book fueled liberal and conservative ideology towards the poor. However, while the article is well researched and fairly written, it focuses too much on the criticism of opposing views rather than supporting Ehrenreich’s own ideas.
Ehrenreich is open about any biases that she may have. She states that she served with author Michael Harrington as a co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (Ehrenreich 609). This …show more content…
The main idea of the article is that poverty isn’t caused by the poor having a different way of thinking or attitude than the rich, but that the root cause is simply a lack of money to pay higher wages. This idea isn’t talked about until the final sentence of the article where Ehrenreich simply says, “Poverty is a shortage of money”, and then expects her idea to stand on its own with no supporting evidence. While this idea may be true, Ehrenreich never supports her main idea with facts. If the point of the article was to convince the reader that poverty is not caused by a flawed mindset, then it failed by not offering evidence of any alternative theories. In its current state the article is only a criticism of the conservative ideology towards those who are in
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