Nickel and Dimed

I really enjoyed reading about how Barbara Ehrenreich, an upper-class woman, dropped everything to live in the life of the lower-class for two years. This was alarming because I do not believe that I can think of anyone who would willingly give up a perfectly good lifestyle just to experience life at the bottom. A part that really stuck out to me was when Ehrenreich stated, "The poor can see the affluent easily enough- on television, for example, or on the covers of magazines. But the affluent rarely see the poor" (Ehrenreich, 243). This is something that makes complete sense, but also something that I had never really thought about before. I agree with Ehrenreich in that people take for granted the things in life that are made possible by workers who can not afford to enjoy these things themselves. I also found it interesting how she makes the point that the people who work the hardest in life are usually struggling to get by (Ehrenreich, 243). This is ironic because you most often pair hard work with success, when in reality most of the people at the top are just their because they were lucky and were born into an upper-class family. Of course, this is not true for all cases but I feel that this is true more times than not, especially with politics. Ehrenreich is really trying challenge everyone and make them think to themselves whether or not they could handle a lifestyle at the bottom of the food chain. So, could you?