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Example research essay topic: Minimum Wage Makes One - 760 words

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In the book Nickel and Dimed its author Barbara Ehrenreich, is given an assignment to investigate the life of a minimum wage worker. Her primary reason for going under cover is to see if she can match income to expenses as the truly poor attempt to do everyday. The author chooses Portland in the state of Maine as the location of her investigation. The reason is that this heavily industrialized city it is located in the New England, which is particularly popular among the immigrants form all over the world to start their new lives on the territory of the United States.

Ehrenreich's motives gave her the tools to experience poverty from a statistical standpoint, but kept her from experiencing the problems poor people faced when it really mattered, such as going hungry. In the second chapter of the book, the reader becomes very aware of Ehrenreich's financial situation, and what are her insights onto the problem she investigates. She is a well off worker who has not had a minimum wage job since she was 18 years old. That is what makes this book interesting, the fact that the reader is learning of the struggles of the poor just as Ehrenreich had. She portrays each person very well and makes one get to know the people and their different struggles. She does this in addition to finding out if the math works out between minimum wage and housing, bills food etc.

Because she goes from the top to the bottom, the first hand experience and flat out shock at some points makes the book very interesting. Although Ehrenreich's motive was supposed to be straight forward, throughout her very first few days she found out that even though she doesnt necessarily live in poverty like the people she worked with, while undergoing the assignment, did everyday. Barbara learned of their hardships and struggles. She actually began to feel like one of them, waking up with physical pain, hating her bosses and dreading work. Barbara finds out that among employers there is always some racial prejudice present. The people of nationalities other than white are oftentimes viewed as more predisposed to be poor and less successful in the living.

One of the reasons for that is social background of these people, which is based in the most cases on the lack of proper education, and tense, even somewhat criminal, sociocultural relationship. Maid work is a particular focus of the chapter. When Barbara inquires as to why so many of maid employers seemed openly hostile, her co-workers had this to say: They think were stupid, was Holly's answer. They think we have nothing better to do with our time. Marge too looked suddenly sober.

Were nothing to these people, she said. Were just maids. Nor are we much of anything to anyone else. One myth I think we carry with us today is that we think they dont care. What I mean is, you see someone washing dishes or cleaning a hotel room and you wonder if it matters to them whether or not they do a good job.

There is no other choice for these women to stand up for their rights other than forming the professional unions, which would protect them from mistreats at the work place. Ultimately the assignment started to teach Barbara of what its like to actually be a minimum wage worker. Also she began to realize all the things that she had, but did not need in her old life and also all of the things that she took for granted. Although the undercover work made Ehrenreich feel like a poverty stricken minimum wage worker, it could never have taught her the fear and total unknowing ness of life that those people know. She always had her old life to go back to which included a high paying job, a decent bank account and a home that she could afford. Although Ehrenreich is not a real minimum wage worker, her work as an undercover journalist makes one feel like she is.

Throughout her investigation in Florida she describes the situations she and her co-workers go through in such a descriptive and vivid manner that the reader cannot help but begin to understand how difficult the lives of those workers must be. Barbara Ehrenreich opens the door to a new world that not many upper class Americans know about, but soon will after reading this extremely unique and interesting book. Bibliography: Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Hudson, OH: Owl Books, 2002.


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Research essay sample on Minimum Wage Makes One

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