NICKEL AND DIMED

One of the assignments that we had to do and that I found really interesting was to read a book called Nickel and Dimed. This is a book that talks about unpleasant and awkward economic realities that are going on in America. Ehrenreich decides to work in a low paying jobs in order to show America how difficult is to survive and live a some what of a normal life off minimum wage jobs. She points out that 60 % of the America work force makes less than 10 $ an hour, probably closer to 7$. Which means that tens of millions of American toil at soul destroying jobs that pay a pittance so that middle and upper classes can live in comfort, and not have to worry about work that keeps this unequal society afloat. Her investigation of the world of dead-end work in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota is exceedingly courageous, morally and politically profound, and beautifully articulated. What is interesting are the jobs that were taken, a house cleaning person, Wal-Mart, and being a waitress. It was impossible for her to make ends meet on those incomes. Not that she did not try, but the numbers did not work out, they cannot work out, they will never work out until we as a society work out the cost of living here. Probably the most stunning was the housekeeper story, that one has the most impact of all the stories. That alone makes you realize how hard it can be for people to empathize with each other, you can just see the look on the person's face who is complaining about the service, when the service was excellent.

She use to get $2.43 and hour and plus the tips that she received , and the customers would not tip her well. The minimum wage at this present time in Florida was $7.25 an hour according to www.worldlawdirect.com. The working class experience incredible and some times inhuman circumstances just to survive. This book shows some of the terrible working conditions and the result of them in most of those workers. It shows also how the same system is designed, from my view it is not to help and assist these people. One dollar to upper class people might mean almost nothing, but for the working poor it means a whole lot more.