Barbara’s work on “How America turned poverty into a crime” is very alive to even address the current situations and gap among the rich and the poor in the society and thus it challenges the reader to imagine that Barbara’s work was composed 18 years ago. According to her work, conditions have only continued to aggravate for the poor folks whose predicament is documented in her book. Enrenreich pronounces the contempt which beneficiaries of assistance programs face from the rich who officiate such sessions. “They act like every dollar you get is coming out of their own paychecks”. Therefore, from a sociological perspective this writer’s work can be put into response of addressing issues of stigma, meritocracy, dependency, capitalism as well as individualism.
Ehrenreich has composed an excellent discussion pertaining the stigmatization of poverty by the Americans based on a certain public outlook of the poor in the society. According to the writer’s article, poverty in America is not only defined in terms of an individual’s failure to meet monetary necessities but more so poverty levels are given a mean of a disability or a certain disorder which is more often treated as a manner of life of deprivation. This kind of ordinary stigma can be regarded to widen the gulley of extreme poverty cases in America. The writer has also shown America as a meritocratic nation which judges its subjects on their isolated abilities rather than their roles in the society. The isolated admissions of women and blacks as well as accumulating small expenses and bills for the poor cases bankruptcy places America as a meritocratic republic.
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Ehrenreich also discloses the struggle with high dependency ratios arising from how the society disregards low-wage employees failing to recognize them as human beings. The writer explains the torture that is overhauled unto the needy families. The case of Kristen and Parente given by the writer is a good analogy to show how the low-waged workers and the poor were treated with contempt. The complex demands for the job seekers also are a promotion to dependency where Kristen is also described as a brilliant person but eligibility requirements.
Capitalism also comes out clearly in the author’s work whereby the private sector possesses the ownership of the economy setting up competitive market and capital accumulation. The article gives a report that discusses the America’s mean cities with even more rising contestants. Urban officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about laws such as sitting, loitering, sleeping or even lying down. This means that the American capitalists do not take into consideration the lower class category of people. The capitalist group controls many sectors of the economy such as insurance firms also.
Individualism as depicted by Ehrenreich is being self-reliant and independent. The writer introduces her book at a time when she worked for a month in unskilled jobs as a chamber maid and waitress in Florida and also as a house cleaner and nursing aide at Maine. She describes how she worked poor and how her diligence and courteous life would not earn her any good reputation and she describes how individuals would survive on six to seven dollars in an hour. Individualism seems to widen the gap between the poor and the rich even more. Despite the gap between the rich and the poor in America, the writer wisely ends by giving the annotation that the working poor sacrifice their privacy, health, families, leisure and everything so that the whole society may live more conveniently.
Reference
Ehrenreich, B. (2018). Nickel and Dimed. Inequality in the 21st Century , 107-114. doi:10.4324/9780429499821-21
