Preview

Morgan Spurlock Minimum Wage

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
297 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Morgan Spurlock Minimum Wage
"Minimum Wage"

The episode of 30 Days about trying to live on minimum wage opened the eyes of it's viewers. It placed star Morgan Spurlock and fiancee Alex in the lives of the "working poor" of the United States for one month. Spurlock's fiancee walked to work daily rather than spend the money on riding the bus. Both Morgan and Alex were in need of healthcare during this time period just to find over-crowded free clinics, afraid to go to a real hospital because of the cost. Alex's 30th birthday also fell within this time, they spent it the best way they could. Just to spice things up more, Spurlock decided to invite his brother's kids for a weekend. The money that they spent taking the kids out one day showed how hard it must be to take
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Book Review Of Nickel And Dimed By Barbara Enrenreich
    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Book Review Of Nickel And Dimed By Barbara Enrenreich

    Whereas, In Nickel and Dimed on (not) getting by in America, which was our third book review an experiment of living the life of an average person on minimum wage conducted by Barbara Enrenreich. The reason as stated in the initial review was to see if Enrenreich,”could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do every day “(Nickel and Dimed, 6). In chapter eight of the Doob text labeled under “Poor People Work” one of the factors listed that affected employment opportunities were minimum wage. It basically discussed how the minimum wage is not very beneficial for people living in poverty. (You hear in the news and constantly displayed through different forms of the media that the American Dream is the golden ticket) Well how…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Ehrenreich's Rhetorical Analysis: Too Poor To Make The News
    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Ehrenreich's Rhetorical Analysis: Too Poor To Make The News

    Ehrenreich also writes about her nephew and the hardship that he and his family faced when his mother-in-law had a heart attack and was not able to provide for her disabled child and two grandchildren. The mother-in-law could no longer make her mortgage on a single-wide trailer that had depreciated as much as a used car. Unemployment rates increased as much as twenty percent in some areas and during the height of the real estate boom, rents quickly spiraled higher and higher, leaving many lower income individuals no choice but to cram as many as five people into a tiny one bedroom apartment. Dividing the rent among five people was affordable but uncomfortable and sometimes unlawful. Zoning laws were broken due to parking thus causing expensive fines for people who can’t afford to pay other obligations; domestic violence has risen due to stress filled apartments or homes due to overcrowding. The working poor is a term used to describe “individuals and families who maintain regular employment but remain in relative poverty due to low levels of pay and dependent expenses.” (Wikipedia.org) some people do not acknowledge and others have not heard of this group which consists of individuals who work at least one full-time job and sometimes even two or three part-time jobs that only pay minimum wage and have no health benefits, in order to support themselves and their…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Low Wage Workers In Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed
    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Low Wage Workers In Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

    In Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich takes a break from her real life and lives as a low wage-worker takes a low wage job in order to understand and find out what wage workers really go through everyday not knowing what's next for them, and how they live off of minimum wage. In everyday life low-income people do many things in order to survive on a daily basis. There are people who work multiple jobs, or live in a shelter, live in their cars, house/apartments housed by various amounts of people, even if they don't know them, and in the book Barbara talks about many of these examples.…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Nickel And Dimed Analysis
    • 2011 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Nickel And Dimed Analysis

    In “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America”, Barbara Ehrenreich, a well-off white woman with a Ph.D. in Biology questions how low-income workers, especially females, make a living. Due to the welfare reform, 4 million women were about to have to enter into the workforce, usually for less than minimum wage. Ehrenreich decides to make an experiment out of her ideas. She decided she would travel to three different cities: Key West, FL., Portland, ME., and Twin Cities, MN. (all picked based off of the low salary there), and attempt to live as a regular low-income woman. She wants to find out how they make their income work and what they do to get by. Ehrenreich makes a set of…

    • 2011 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Barbara Ehrenreich's Serving In Florida
    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Barbara Ehrenreich's Serving In Florida

    Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist who posed as an unskilled worker in 1998 to highlight the struggles encountered every day by Americans attempting to live on minimum wage. Ms Ehrenreich had always been interested in poverty. As the result of the new law, people would be expected to leave welfare and get jobs, sounds good. Unfortunately, the jobs they were able to get really didn’t pay enough to live on. Serving in Florida is about her experience as waitress trying to make ends meet just like millions of Americans do everyday. The overall message of the story is that wages in America are too low and rents are too high.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Paycheck To Poverty Analysis
    • 889 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Paycheck To Poverty Analysis

    line”. Gilbert is representative of women all over the nation who face similar trials daily. The documentary, Paycheck to Paycheck, shows us a portrayal of women’s lives that’s less about work/life balance and more about work/life survival. Like Katrina, earning $9.49 an hour (in some cases even less) many women face the struggles of poverty and living paycheck to paycheck. In Katrina’s situation, as a single woman, she was barely able to meet financial obligations because her salary was devoted to monthly expenses. These expenses surpassed the bi-weekly $750 check she received to make ends meet. Although Katrina works a 40 - or more - hour week, she still must…

    • 889 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Film Response to Can't Afford to Grow Old
    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Film Response to Can't Afford to Grow Old

    The film states that every year up to a million Americans are forced to live in poverty due to the cost of long-term care in order for them to qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that provides health coverage or nursing home coverage to certain categories of low-asset people, and people with disabilities and the elderly in need of nursing home care. In order to qualify for Medicaid it was shown in the film that an elderly person must only make an income of eleven thousand dollars a year. Unfortunately some individuals who are just a little bit over than that can not qualify for Medicaid, but paying for regular medical services on their own without being covered is not affordable. So basically you either have to be very rich to afford continuing care or extremely poor for the government to then help you out. Everyone in-between is struggling greatly and they are trying to find ways to help afford health care. Some even suggested that they should spend through the rest of their savings, go into poverty, and then qualify for Medicaid. The film showed the heartbreak people suffered from when trying to tell there loved ones that they can no longer support them with their medical needs and there is nothing they can do now.…

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    30 Days Minimum Wage Essay Example
    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages

    30 Days Minimum Wage Essay Example

    Morgan Spurlock, creator of the show 30 Days, features an episode called “Minimum Wage,” in which he and his fiancé, Alex, live on minimum wage for thirty days in the heart of America; Columbus Ohio. Morgan and Alex subsist on forty dollars a day, relying on public transportation to get to and from work. Morgan and Alex fully immerse themselves into the life of the working poor, are not part of this socioeconomic status, but from a wealthy class who undertake the role of the working poor to show viewers certain aspects of life while working for minimum wage.…

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    50 Essays Discussion Questions
    • 2115 Words
    • 9 Pages

    50 Essays Discussion Questions

    In the essay “Serving in Florida”, Barbara Ehrenreich describes individuals she works with through direct comparisons of how they adapt to survive in poverty. Ehrenreich speaks with her co-worker Gail, who is “thinking of escaping from her roommate by moving into the Days Inn” which is 40 to 60 dollars a day, forcing Ehrenreich to reflect on her own living situation, only “made possible by the $1,300 [she] had allotted [herself]… when [she] began [her] low-wage life”. Obviously the living conditions for Gail and Ehrenreich are deplorable, but through the direct comparison of their situations,…

    • 2115 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Nickel and Dimed
    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Nickel and Dimed

    Barbara Ehrenreich used her book Nickel and Dimed to illustrate her job assignment to live in the shoes of and, write about her experiences as a minimum wage worker in America. Ehrenreich goes to live in Key West, Maine, and Minnesota and works low wage jobs, sometimes more than one at a time. The point Ehrenreich is trying to make is that it is almost impossible to live a decent life in America with one, let alone two jobs paying very low wages. It is tough to be a low wage worker in America.…

    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis Of The Documentary 'End Of Poverty'
    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Analysis Of The Documentary 'End Of Poverty'

    In the documentary entitled “End of poverty” they conveyed numerous people who lived in various countries such as Africa, Bolivia, Brazil and many others that live in treacherous conditions. Majority of the people who live in this slave like conditions work for very little money or no money at all. In exchange for their labor they receive food or shelter in return. To begin, in the beginning of the documentary a man named Luciana along with his family were first introduced. Luciana has been unemployed for five years, while he tries to provide for a family of six including himself. For a living Luciana sells bottles for fifty cents a day and brings home what he can for his family. His family lives in a room located in a basement as they struggle…

    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    A Poor Cousin Reflection
    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A Poor Cousin Reflection

    In “A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class,” it is about a woman named Caroline Payne who was a hard worker and had a lot of motivation to work and better herself. She was not viewed from a whole person perspective. She was a typical American citizen, fifty year-old, Caucasian woman. She has a two-year associate’s degree, who works at the local Wal-Mart in Muncie, Indiana. Caroline has not lived what you call the “American Dream.” She has had a challenge trying to find ways to survive for her and daughter just be fed for dinner and clothed. Caroline has been married twice and both marriages have failed. She did not grow up with her biological father and her step-father abused her. She has four kids, three boys that live with their father and one daughter, named Amber, who is disabled. Amber has a clubfoot and mild retardation because of Caroline’s emotional assaults, not eating nutritiously, and smoking cigarettes. Caroline only got a few benefits of assistance; she got Medicaid for fix her teeth that had been damaged and social security to live off of with her daughter.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Minimum Wage Struggles
    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Minimum Wage Struggles

    In the United States of America, there is not a federal minimum wage. Some states have their own minimum wage, but can be very low, for example, Georgia’s minimum wage is only $5.15 an hour. There are also four states that do not require a minimum wage. People are struggling to a day to day basis with putting food on the table for their family. If our country had a required federal minimum wage of $15 an hour, there would be fewer people who will struggle financially.…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Minimum Wage Issue
    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Minimum Wage Issue

    The minimum wage was first enacted into law as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. The original minimum wage applied to workers engaged in interstate commerce and the production of goods for interstate commerce. In 1938, this applied to roughly 11.0 million workers out of a total of 54.9 million workers. The minimum wage was set at $0.25 per hour. However, by 1966 the minimum wage $1.25 and applied to virtually all workers. In its beginnings, the minimum wage was set at a value that was high enough for a person to live off of (Valetta 3). However, in recent years someone who works a job that pays minimum wage will fall well below the poverty line. Therefore, instead of somebody working three jobs to support their family, a…

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Child Observation: Child and Adolescent Psychology
    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Child Observation: Child and Adolescent Psychology

    When the second boy got dropped off, he was immediately distracted by the other boy, and leaving his sister was not a problem at all. I guess that day was show and tell day, because they were each excited to show off what they had brought to each other. They didn’t want to wait until the designated time to show things off. The other three boys came in at the same time. I’m assuming they rode the bus together, because they came in talking about one of the older kids that must have been picking on one of them. As soon as they walked through the door, they ran and told Mrs. Maddock, their teacher. Of course the event wasn’t as serious as they…

    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics