Writing Reflection #4 In Katherine Newman’s The Job Ghetto, she speaks on the reality many Americans face when seeking employment in this country. One of the most obvious Conservative talking points is to “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” and try to find yourself a job and that the market is not stagnant or difficult right now for those with only high school diplomas. One of the things that I appreciate that Newman shows in her article is that the fast-food industry has been growing over the last few years, from McDonald’s to Burger King to many others, and has shown very little to the more than 2.3 million people that work under their company.…
In Michelle Chen’s article, “Five Myths About Fast-Food Work” she talks about misconceptions associated with people who work at a fast food restaurant. The first issue Chen addresses is the idea that only teenagers work fast food for little to nothing. However, Chen explains that the majority of workers are around twenty years old and some are single parents that are trying to provide for their families. The Next misconception associated with fast-food is the idea that workers can eventually work their way up to owning their own franchise. Chen explains that is highly unlikely because most of the employees are earning minimum wage or close to minimum wage and to start up their own business of the franchise they would need around $750,000. Chen’s…
Due to these low paying jobs people are forced to live in cheap hotels or even their car, because they can't afford enough to live. Managers are given more for doing less than someone who is running around and working for hours which are seemed to be unfair to many in a busy workplace. Politizane’s, Wealth Inequality in America argues that the gap of how who is rich, poor and middle class is very uneven in America. In the video they give an example that 4% of the nation's money goes to the 1% of people who happen to be known as rich. I agree with all the following argument due to all of the opportunities given by Canada or America placed unfairly. I strongly agree with Barbara Ehrenreich's piece of Serving in Florida. In the community of Rochester minimum wage is set at $7.75, with a full time job at the end of the year an individual with minimum wage of about 15,080. A car may cost 10,000 and a house is much more. I agree with the fact of people making minimum wage do not have enough to live but I disagree with the fact that they do more than people who are doing other work. In Rochester, Mayo Clinic and IBM happen to be the biggest…
In his essay, “Fast Food Nation” Eric Schlosser condemns the impact of fast food on human health and American economy. Schlosser detests the fast food chain because it causes thousands of independent business to come to an end. As a result, unemployment plays a major role among these small scale businessmen. In addition it creates social differences among the people due to food market being captured by fast food chain. In order to attain a monopoly and dominate the fast food industry, they employ low paid and unskilled work force which is a threat to the public and migrant farm workers.…
Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power” in Contarini Fleming, 1832. What this quote is means is that there certain situations we can’t control, however we can control our actions and how we deal with the situation. This quote can be proven true in both, the play the Crucible by Arthur Miller and the book Night by Elie Wiesel. In the Crucible, John Proctor learns to deal with the Salem Witch Trials and in Night, Elie has to deal with the Holocaust.…
“Almost 29% of the families in the United States are considered low income, while the other 71% have a high enough income to survive.”(Fry) There are many low income families in this country; the United States has built a multitude of programs to help the people in need. The Housing Voucher Program is an organization that helps families and folks with disabilities that are struggling to have a cozy place to live in. Congress has been planning on cutting the funding for the Housing Voucher Program, because the country cannot afford it. They also blame the lower classes that they are not making enough money to support themselves. It is not the poors fault that they are living off of minimum wage.…
The first point Paine commends America on is that “…the poor are not oppressed, and the rich are not privileged” (Paine 6-7). However, in Fast Food Nation, the poor are so oppressed, they are afraid to ask for worker’s compensation after suffering injuries because they already know that the chances of getting any money from the big businesses are slim to none. In addition, the rich,…
For many waiters and waitresses at restaurants fair conditions aren't cooking for them. In today's society there are millions of people who are employed, who work hard to make ends meet, and sometimes that still isn't enough. Even with millions of people employed, there is still a huge amount of people who are living below the poverty line. For waiters and waitresses about forty percent live below poverty line in smaller cities. The minimum wage for waiters and waitresses is 2.13$ an hour. Paying waiters and waitresses an hourly rate under the minimum wage and having them rely on their tips is inequitable. It needs to be modified so that even with small jobs everyone has the chance to make ends meet.…
Most people who work “low-end” jobs and get paid minimum wage are still struggling in poverty. Most minimum wage workers do not have the means necessary to pay for basic everyday necessities, let alone having money for personal expenses. Last February, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that raising…
The 44th president of the United States of America said, “We should raise the minimum wage so that no one who works full time has to live in poverty.” For those who do not know what minimum wage is, it is the lowest wage sanctioned by law or by a special arrangement. In the United States, the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. According to BLS Reports, in 2014 77.2 million people at the ages of 16 and older were paid at hourly rates. Out of those 77.2 million, 1.3 million received the minimum wage, while 1.7 of them had wages below the minimum. Through years of petitions and fighting for a raise in minimum wage, the people of the US were finally noticed by President Barack Obama. The president himself has taken the situation into his own hands,…
With all the talk of "welfare reform" and "market economy", people are not even trying, as a society, to find ways to help people who were not lucky enough to be born into the opportunities so many of them enjoy without even thinking about it. In 2012, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan shared their plans to strengthen the middle class. But instead of offering any serious solutions for creating jobs with benefits and wages that can support a family, Romney and Ryan have made it clear that they are planning to balance the budget on the backs of America's workers and the poor (Huffington Post). As the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow, it is clear that people need to stand together and demand that workers are paid what they need and deserve. Wealth should be distributed fairly. In 2010 Congress passed a bill that would cut the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by close to $40 billion over the next decade. By eliminating this benefit, Congress not only cuts off hundreds of thousands of children from nutritious food through SNAP, it also ensures that approximately 221,000 children who could qualify for free school meals will no longer be eligible (U.S News). There is an old saying that says, “One does not realize what one has, until one loses it.” That is exactly what most Americans have not yet experienced, that is why is so easy for them to say that welfare should not be an important concern for the…
Hunger is not caused by a lack of food alone, but also by the continued poverty many people face. According to the Census Bureau in 2014, 14.8 percent of Americans live in poverty. This number was lower, but has increased over the past four years. About every one in every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are below the poverty level. Many of these workers have families. The average weekly cost to feed a family of four is $216. If workers are bringing home wages below or at the poverty level, providing for their family is a huge struggle. 100 million Americans are considered poor or near poor. With so many people who are food insecure, the numbers of hungry and poor Americans are very high.…
There has been a lot of discussion regarding the increase of minimum wage across the nation. Currently, the wage is set at a low amount of $7.25 an hour. In today’s society it is almost impossible to live on only an income of $7.25 an hour especially for those who are raising a family. In President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address, the president proposed to raise the minimum wage to 9 dollars by the year 2015 (Luhby). A higher minimum wage would help people living in poverty by providing better means of financial stability, and it would also improve the chances of those people trying to escape poverty stricken living conditions. Another bonus to increasing the minimum wage is that it could potentially…
Millions of people in US work long, hard hours for extremely low wages. Instead of spending time with their families, they serve others food, clean their offices and sometimes their house. They are described as unskilled laborers who never worked hard to free themselves from the poverty line. Different people have different opinions on low-wage work and why it even exists. Many companies benefit from low-wage work because they can spend less on employees which makes it easier for their companies to survive. Low-wage work is always unfair. For instance, some people are born into poverty and they are more likely to stay that way. The consequence of not having a proper education is that they cannot obtain high paying jobs that require strong…
Attaining financial success in America is not easy; it is a struggle that many Americans hope to achieve one day. There can be certain setbacks for some individuals who hope to achieve this position, but are held back possibly due to their race or class. Although it is said that everyone has equal individual opportunity in America, this is not so true for some factors we cannot control. Being born into a specific household that may be upper class or lower class is something beyond our control, yet controls us as we continue to strive. Furthermore, it is interesting how we cannot tell the class that one is in just by looking at their appearance, since people in America do not dress less fancy if they fall in a lower class. What I had not realized before is that the lower class has it much harder than I had previously thought, especially because minimum wage does not cut it for most of us. Even though a person can be fully employed at a place that earns minimum wage, it is still very difficult to get by, especially if you have a whole family to feed. Minimum wage makes it difficult for even one person to live off, let alone a whole family. Bills add up fast, and this puts many people in a situation in which they lose hope. For a waiter or waitress to succeed would be very difficult, especially since minimum wage is just not enough for people to meet their needs. It is being increasingly common for employers to lower the hours for their workers, and in order for one to succeed in a position like this is close to impossible. I believe that if many of these underpaid, minimum wage workers cannot afford food sometimes, and would rather skip a meal than spend money of a meal, they are considered to be in poverty. Yet, it is amazing how they are still not classified as being in poverty. This makes me wonder of what the government actually thinks what poverty is, maybe skipping two meals instead of one?…