Overall ReflectionMain point of her book: in many cases, a poor person working full-time
at one or two “unskilled” jobs, can NOT survive in America. I
had not thought of the fact that someone might not be able to acquire
the money for an apartment’s deposit, requiring them to sleep in a car
or a motel. And that cooking healthfully and cost-efficiently
requires a minimal amount of appliances and resources that many can’t
afford. Some of the people Ehrenreich met in her experiment hardly ate
at all, and even she herself could afford or cook little more than junk
food. The most depressing thing
about the book was not the widespread poverty in America, but
the widening gap between the poor and the rich, and the seeming
hopelessness of it all. The people Ehrenreich got to know didn’t seem to
feel like they could bring about change or even deserved better in some
cases. Companies seem more than happy to exploit the people since it
furthers their capitalistic mission. Ehrenreich’s conclusion is that
nothing will improve until the poor themselves rise up in protest and
demand the income and living standards that would meet their needs. Ehrenreich is actually truthful about the fact that her
experience does not mimic what it is actually like to live in poverty -
-it merely shows the difficulty of living from day-to-day on low wages.
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