Buy an essay: Book review

The book that is reviewed is a bestseller “Nickel and dime” by Barbara Ehrenreich. The book touches upon a very important and hot problem of poor working Americans, their difficult life conditions.
It is interesting to study the story about how the author wrote this book. This was a kind of experiment made by Barbara Ehrenreich, when she decided to try herself as a simple low-wage worker, and look at the life of poor Americans from the inside. The experiment was held in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, where the author had simple part-and tried works, and tried to live on the money she got. The aim of the research made by the author was to determine whether simple a low-wage worker (millions of whom live in America) can match income to expenses ( “make ends meet”) that is, to live on wages.
So in fact the book is a kind of chronicling of the author’s life in the role, but on the other hand Enrenreich claims that she did not try to “play poor”, but to hold a scientific, objective investigation of the reality. In her interview. Enrenreich explained: “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)
The main topic and problematic of the book is, of course, poverty, and life of poor working parts of the population of America, and everything connected with it: the social aspect of their lives, as rights and status in society; the economic problems associated with lack of money for living, food and minimal costs, and many other aspects. Despite the fact that the experiment was only few month long, but the author managed to discover all the hardships of life of poor people, and present them to the society to show the situation of people in the country, show the existence of a problem.

The experiment took place in 3 cities, where Barbara Ehrenreich tried to rent living place, and to find work so as to get money for rent and life.
The first city was Florida, where the author worked as a waitress at a restaurant, and got small wage to pay for renting a trailer. With time it became clear that salary did not cover the expences of living, so Barbara took the second job at a hotel, working as a hotel maid. Though of course it was too difficult to work so much and hard, so the author found it impossible to continue living and working like that.
The first example of Barbara Ehrenreich’s work as a waitress showed how difficult and really hard a work can be, despite the small salary she got. That is the first problem of low-wages people: they are to work really hard, and get only minimum for that! The author described that kind of work as “grueling, withering, leading the way to ailments and pains, and permeated with a callow sense of dehumanization”. (Ehrenreich 2001)
The second city was Maine, where Barbara Ehrenreich found a job at a residential housekeeping service “The Maid”, and also worked as a dietary aide in a nursing home, so that together she was forced to work 7 days a week. Yes, it has also proved to be difficult, exhausting and difficult task – to work and to survive. The work at a housekeeping service was physically hard and exhausting, while low-paid and the second work as taking care of the Alzheimer’s ward was no less complex, but though more and more responsible.

buy an essay

Also the author showed a situation with being exploit by the boss, who was strict with the women, made them keep to a rigid schedule, that did not give an opportunity to have a lunch break, or some break to at all! Yes, that was the second problem that the author discovered: the poor treatment of employees by employers, when workers are simply exploit, and treating only as a “working capital”, from which employers want to claim as much as possible, in exchange for a small salary only. Why than working people have no rights for being treated with dignity and receive a decent pay?
The third attempt was made in Minnesota, where Barbara Ehrenreich worked at Wal-Mart doing some routine job, and was living at a hotel. This situation was practically the same as the previous, as the job was extremely low payed and she again was unable to buy any necessary staff for her, and even to eat normal food, but fast food only. Again the situation at work showed that “the employees are working part too hard for the wages they are given” (Ehrenreich 2001).
The conclusion from the situations written about can be that the unskilled jobs as physically and mentally very difficult, then employees are treated unfairly, and get too small wages for that. That situation occurred because great number of people are forced to work far from their home, to rent apartments and get any kind of work to pay for living. And employers keep wages low because employees always try to keep their jobs, they are forced to do that. The reasons for their poor life situation are that low-wage workers have little education, and transportation problems, so they may be unable to find a better job with higher wage.
The important and interesting question that is also raised in the book, is the so-called “ American dream” – that is a life that most Americans imagine and dream to have. The main idea of the “American dream” is that all citizens who have education, who works fairly will have a decent life. The author writes about this: “I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium,that ‘hard work’ was the secret of success: ‘Work hard and you’ll get ahead’ or ‘It’s hard work that got us where we are.” (Ehrenreich 2001)
But in fact from the book we can see that low-wage employees work really hard all days, but get little reward and live in poor living conditions, so just “to meet the ends”. Why is it so? This situation is not a question of work and laziness, but rathet a problem of social unfair and inequality.

This book is actually very interesting and informative, so that it gives an idea about the other side of American life that many do not know the truth about. Of course, the book describes only the opinion and conclusions of the author, her view on the problem and personal experience. But this book is yet another proof of the huge problems in the lives of many people in America, and it is important that the author allows the public to see and pay attention to this problem.

References:

Barbara Ehrenreich. “Nickel and Dimed”. Metropolitan Books, New York, 2001
David K. Shipler . “The Working Poor: Invisible in America”. Knopf , 2004