Ehrenreich's Nickeled And Dimed

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Ehrenreich’s motif for the novel, Nickeled and Dimed, was to investigate the potential impact of a welfare reform, and truly understand the extent of poverty by performing ethnographic research. Ehrenreich conducted a scientific experiment that required her to follow her own ‘golden rules’, to gain the full understanding and experience from the experiment. Ehrenreich established the following rules: she could not utilize any of her skills she had gained through work or education, she has to accept the highest paying job that is offered to her, and she had to choose the cheapest commodities, while considering her safety and privacy.
Enrich searched for the cheapest living facility in Florida, and was hired as a waitress at a restaurant named …show more content…
Whether poor, rich or middle- class, money is what we all need to establish our place in the world. Some have money, others do not, either way, we all find a way to survive. When I initially began reading the book I felt as though this young white woman could never experience the full extent of poverty no matter how hard she was to try because she had already constructed her own financial investments. As I continued to read the novel, Ehrenreich soon came to the realization that those were a few of the many reasons she was unable to fulfill he initial purpose. In fact, she stated the following, “With all the real-life assets I've built up in middle age-bank account, IRA, health insurance, multi-room home-waiting indulgently in the background, there was no way I was going to "experience poverty" or find out how it "really feels" to be a long-term low-wage worker” (Ehrenreich, 2001, P. 11). Poverty is not coincidental people do not just so happen to struggle because of the things they do, I believe it is because of the things they are unable to do. For instance, many employed individuals living below the poverty line can pay their bills, however they do not have enough money left over to pay for food or health care. Although one may have a job, he may not have many other
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Nickeled and Dimed, derived when Barbara Ehrenreich, the author, proposed that someone needed to explore the consequences of people living the everyday life in welfare reform. Ehrenreich was very fortunate and privileged by sitting at a desk and writing for a living hence she has no knowledge of how to live in poverty. Ehrenreich often questioned how uneducated and unskilled workers could survive on such low incomes. Ehrenreich sets out restrictions that she could and could not use during her experience…

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