Quick blog on findings from Huffington Post article on Nickel and Dimed – discuss and reflect on new statistics. What does this new information tell you about our society and the woes of the working poor? Working class? How have things changed? Remained the same? Gotten worse?
19 Comments
Sierra a
10/4/2016 06:46:19 pm
The stats from the Hufffington Post said that unemployment and poverty had hit a high during 2008's recession, but has gone down, according to 2011 and 2013's statistics. 29% of Americans were considered poverty-stricken a couple of months after the book was published. According to my own findings, that number had fell, then rose again to about 16.7% in 2008, then back down to 14.8% in 2014. The living wage is now considered $15, instead of $7.
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Holmes
10/5/2016 05:55:09 am
This is to all - I see a focused discussion on poverty rates and unemployment which is all well and good, but there were other factors discussed in the article. Does not anyone have anything further to say or are you all of one mind?
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Hannah
10/5/2016 10:31:41 am
When you said, "you are only as strong as your weakest link", I think that fundamentally this is a good though but I am not sure if we use it to our benefit. Yes, for America to be strong we have to start strong at the base with a solid working class. However, in today's society I feel that we try to ignore the lower class. Because of this, I think that it stops us as a country from reaching our full potential- if we were to try to strengthen and unify all classes, then it would make us stronger as a whole.
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Edward Byers
10/5/2016 10:32:16 am
I agree that there was a major spike in poverty and unemployment rates during the 2008 recession, due to a lower number of available jobs. In the novel, the author described a low number of available jobs, saying that many of the "wanted" ads were only for companies to interview for replacement jobs. However in the more recent article the author noted that the job market was much more depressed after the recession, with extremely low job availability.
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Connor
10/9/2016 07:08:12 pm
To go along with Edward, there has been an increase of food stamps being used by Americans over the past couple years. Although all races of Americans use food stamps, several particular races have began to have larger families than others, resulting in the greater need of food stamps as the families in poverty tend to have larger families in order to receive a greater amount of food stamps.
Hannah
10/4/2016 07:39:29 pm
I found that 23% of American currently can't afford health care as compared to the 33% mentioned in the 2011 article. This percentage has gone down which could be a result of Obamacare and Medicade. It is also found that the percentage of Americans living in poverty has gone down from 29% when the book was published to 15% today. Since the book was written, the conditions for the working class have gotten worse due to the economic crash in 2008. Many people were laid off and job opportunities were scare for everyone, and the conditions were certainly not improved either. However, from 2008 to present the conditions are slowly improving as the economy builds back up but we still have a long ways to go.
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Holmes
10/5/2016 05:56:53 am
This is to all - I see a focused discussion on poverty rates and unemployment which is all well and good, but there were other factors discussed in the article. Does not anyone have anything further to say or are you all of one mind?
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Edward Byers
10/5/2016 10:37:36 am
This decrease in the number of people is definitely a positive, showing more citizens are able to access a doctor, and possibly improving their health. The author noted in Nickel and Dimed that the low wage workers were very unhealthy, due to their lack of access to healthcare.
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Connor
10/9/2016 07:18:54 pm
As Edward stated that low wage workers were very unhealthy, which is very true, the issue of how to solve it comes to mind. These workers are metaphorically put in a hole they cant dig out of because all they can do is work to try and get money to live, let alone affording healthy food. But how do you change this? Is there a way to help these people and how would you know who to help?
Connor Smith
10/4/2016 08:10:33 pm
As Hannah and Sierra have posted these accurate percentages accounting the people who could not afford medicare, living in poverty, or job opportunities, one must not forget what these percentages mean. In sheer numbers of people, these percentages mean almost 47 million people who were in poverty in 2014. As of 2015, there were around 31 million people who could not afford to pay for Obamacare. The reason for such poverty was due to the crash in 2008 which led to a massive amount of jobs moving to overseas, leaving millions jobless. There soon became millions that required the help of medicare and food stamps. Still, in contrast, sources say there are also people who choose to take advantage of the government's help and live off of the pay while not striving to look for jobs in order to pay back their due.
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Holmes
10/5/2016 06:01:15 am
This is to all - I see a focused discussion on poverty rates and unemployment which is all well and good, but there were other factors discussed in the article. Does not anyone have anything further to say or are you all of one mind?
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Connor Smith
10/5/2016 10:34:50 am
America as of now is in around 19 trillion dollars worth of debt, and although help is needed, the handing out of money to civilians in hurting America more than ever. It comes to the point of which we cannot give help to the civilians any longer because we have a black hole of debt that is almost impossible to come out of. Still there may be discreet ways to eliminate funds for individuals that are taking advantage of the system, but to do so would be very difficult.
Hannah
10/5/2016 03:03:54 pm
I find it interesting that you bring up how some people basically 'use' the advantages of government aid instead of working themselves. From a view of social services, how should we determine who does and does not receive aid? I think it would be very difficult task to judge who needs aid from an economic depression, or who simply needs it because they are lazy and do not have the drive to do work themselves.
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Edward Byers
10/9/2016 03:20:49 pm
I think that maybe the data you have given better represents the sheer number of people living in poverty than a simple statistic, and it is good to quantify the statistic sometimes for this very reason.
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Edward Byers
10/4/2016 08:46:27 pm
The article showed the poverty rate to be around 29% reflecting the 2008 recession, however now the country has "bounced back" and poverty rates are around 15%. This is most likely due to a larger number of jobs available today than were available when the economy tanked. The article showed that around 37 million people were living on food stamps, and also discussed how the system only reached part of the people who needed assistance. The number of people now on food stamps is around 46.5 million. Also, the rate for the number of unemployed persons who do not qualify for unemployment benefits, at 44% in 2011, which has been reduced to 23.1% now, showing more unemployed people are receiving benefits.
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Holmes
10/5/2016 05:52:31 am
This is to all - I see a focused discussion on poverty rates and unemployment which is all well and good, but there were other factors discussed in the article. Does not anyone have anything further to say or are you all of one mind?
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Hannah
10/5/2016 10:37:55 am
Edward your data is very factual but in terms of what it means to the working class, I think that it shows how the working class receives the worst of our economic struggles. When the economy crashed, there were middle class people who were forced to go on food stamps, but what about the lower class who were already on food stamps? There are now fewer to go around for everyone. Because the lower class is already at the bottom of our society, when an event like the 2008 occurs, we tend to forget how they are going what the middle class is as well, but it's only worse for them.
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Connor
10/9/2016 07:12:13 pm
As Hannah stated, when the economy crashed, which was also mentioned in Nickel and Dimed, the middle class was forced into lower income, some of the severe were forced to poverty. This then sent the individual families that were already impoverished to an all time low, driving some to lose their housing and forced to live on the streets.
Holmes
10/5/2016 05:46:31 am
Where are your comments to each other???
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