Shipler chapter 2 response

"Land of the free, home of the brave?" While the latter part of that statement seems to fall into place when we look at stories such as Christie and Caroline's, "Land of the free" just seems obscure. Yes the meaning is contradictory to the purpose of my response, but when we look at a story like any of the real life people so far in the book, we can realize that this is not a free country. The government supports people with no jobs, no priorities, and usually no hope of turning there life into something of importance. In contrast the government punishes the minimum-wage, barely making it by, hard working Americans by taxing, scamming, and flat out ripping them off. If we look into Christie's story we see that she works exhausting hours for meager pay and gets food stamps along with other government and state services to aid her and her children. When She works hard and gains a pay raise as reward, the government takes other things away, like how she gains ten cents an hour but loses ten dollars in food stamps. Yes this puts her ahead but at the same time it doesn't help get her out of the hole she lives in called poverty.

There are so many different aspects to look at when it comes to poverty and people like the character's we have met so far, along with the people we have touched basis on with Shipler that do nothing with themselves but get paid. Politicians try and throw blame at the other parties responses to poverty and the economy and point fingers at why we are in such a predicament. However, the "party" a person belongs to is not a legit reason for there responses and attempts on a fix for recession and poverty, but what is mainly to blame is the politicians and government departments that base figures off of a fraction of what needs accounted for, i.e. how poverty is based off one thing to the government even though there are so many causes, and then these departments think of ways to better the system or help the country but cause-and-effect leads it nowhere. I could go on and on with politics and government shame but realistically there is nothing we can do. Simply put, we can all become knowledgeable of the countries financial, economic degree and start with what we have, what we can do, and start the youngest generation on a path to succession to break the cycle. How do we do this? I do not know for sure but I think we are not at that point yet, a bit more trial-and-error and we will all be on our way, whether it be now or in the next decade or so.

Working Poor: Chapter 1 response

Taxes, legalized loan sharking, work place scams, ridiculous interest rates! All prime examples of the economic deficit of a country we call United States of America. This chapter is an amazing piece of reading as it takes us into the homes and daily lives of the low and middle class Americans who work hard, actually more then hard, and barely, if at all, scrap enough change together to make the monthly bills to survive. This chapter is the real introduction to why Shipler wrote the book. An in depth reasoning as to why people file bankruptcy, end up living on streets, and how our country is so indentured with debt and recession. I especially like this book so far because Shipler uses prime examples over and over again to state and prove points. He also uses examples of peoples financial problems like taxes and the IRS, and explains how places like H&R Block work. I would also like to state that so far I have concluded that the financial hole America has dug itself into is no ones fault but our own. Mainly to point fingers at interest rates from credit card companies and such, tax representation costs such as "rapid refund", and legalized loan sharks like "PayDay loan, check into cash".

Shipler Intro Response

What would Shipler's reason for writing a book about the working poor, the impoverished, and the indebted backbone of America be? I think his purpose is a pretty clear one. That of the fact that this country is not ran by the president, senators, legislators, or even czars at the moment. This country is ran by the people that work most hours of the day then spend the rest of the waking hours taking care of family and just making it by on their minimum wage. This countries foundation and infrastructure is based on the low wage hard working Americans such as the factory workers, clerks, law enforcement, and medical staff, among the many other jobs people don't even recognize in their lives, that without someone to do them we couldn't function. I think Shipler's reason for writing this book is to convey a message to the ignorance of people and their day to day lives. The message being that we need to respond and aid the people that make this country a success and we need to better understand poverty and what not so we can better solve the issues dragging the economy down.



A few things I learned from this introduction to David Shipler's "The Working Poor", would be first of all that we the people tend to forget all the people and jobs it takes to run a country and keep our fluent, non-chalant, easy going lives running smoothly. Perfect example would be stock clerks in grocery stores, without their hardwork and wage sacrifice how would we get our groceries. Another thing I learned from the introduction is that another thing we fear to address is the youngsters of the country and how poverty affects them. Whether it be a parent not being able to afford proper diet for the child leading to malnutrition, or not being able to afford supplies for school, or as in the book eye glasses to read; it all leads to a less prosperous country when a flock of children grow up from these hardships. One other thing I gathered from the reading is that there are several partitions to poverty. That being said they include financial disability, psychological avertedness, part societal, part personal, and part past and present. This all means that if you have a family with financial hardship, a person with low self-esteem, courage, or heart, a not so prosperous environment, and a difficult past, then the present time for the person or person's will most likely follow into poverty.