Inquiry #4

As I read Nickled and Dimed, Ehrenreich makes certain arguments and suggests that the idea that the middle to upper class has of why the poor are poor is flawed. As I tried to ascertain whether her claims had any truth behind them, I found that I simply didn't know enough, and this in itself helps to prove her point. Yes, I've worked fast-food before, but never because my livlihood depended on it, and never
with the idea that this was the best job I was ever going to get.

Ehrenreich was apparently unable to even support herself without dipping into a fund that a minimum wage worker would not even have. I decided to do some quick research and math to figure out how much it would really cost, living with the bare essentials (Apartment Rental Rates). The cheapest apartment rates I found were $493 monthly. For food, ramen noodles are probably the cheapest you could get. If you buy in bulk you can be eating for about 10 cents per meal. Add in the price of gas and car insurance. I'll say $300 a month. I suppose we really need health insurance, so add in $250 monthly for that and add all of that together to get about one thousand dollars a month. Minimum wage is $7.50, so at that price, you'd need to work a little more than 5 hours assuming taxes take 10 percent of what you make. That's just to break even. You could work ten hour days, save a thousand dollars every month, get your G.E.D., and learn some kind of trade to get out of this mess.

All of that being said, the biggest variable is apartment rate. In cities like New York the rate is too high for any minimum wage worker to possibly pay themselves (Apartment Rental Rates). I think it's not so much about working hard as working smart, and living in an impoverished environment, a person might not have as much sense about managing their money. They might never stop to think, "Hey, if I moved out of NYC I might not be struggling to make ends meat," becuase they haven't been exposed to enough enrichment. I hope I've illustrated that living in and even getting out of poverty is at least financially doable, although there is one more thing to consider, which I don't have an answer to, which is whether even a minimum wage job could be obtained. I think becuase of minimum wages, the human market is kept artificially high, which causes many of the poor to be unable to obtain minimum wage jobs. I'm not saying to abolish minimum wages; I don't think there's an easy solution to this. I just know that some people can't get jobs at all.

"Apartment Rental Rates". M/PF Yieldstar. .