Many Americans live the supposed American Dream of having a nice car, big house, well paying job, and have a secure family. In the renowned novel The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler he captures those Americans who live invisible in America that work so hard to suffer from the psychological effects of poverty. In The Working Poor Shipler goes on to explain these myths. Shipler states that the American Myth “still supposes that any individual from the humblest origins can climb to well-being” It is just that the individuals in this novel are scattered along this spectrum of polar opposites, that each person’s life is the mixed product of bad choices and bad fortune, of roads taken and roads cut off.

The debate on welfare …show more content…
Some of the migrants get it easier if they are able to find a good employer who is willing to help them advance in life and help obtain labor contracts with unions for them. Others are not so lucky; being exposed to pesticides, making minimum wage only to have parts of their checks withheld, and again ignorance of labor laws comes to affect the amount of abuse that they put up with. Chapter five, The Daunting Workplace, expresses the terror that arises in some of the people who enter the “unfamiliar world of the workplace.” Some of these people, who have lived and survived through crack wars, homelessness and prison, get truly frightened when it comes to the work environment; a place where they have not had many opportunities because of no work experience, no education, no support, criminal records, drug addictions, and many countless others. In their old lives they had been taught that “the best defense was a threatening posture of aggression,” but now they had to change the way they looked at things in order to get a job and be able to move out with a place to call their own. Chapter six, Sins of the Fathers, starts by showing and expressing that sexual abuse affects everyone, regardless of class or race. The wealthy just have the financial means to overcome the abuse and normally have the support they …show more content…
Poor housing can be a cause of some of the health problems that they come across and the government and bureaucracies only make things that much more difficult when they try to keep these families from using their care/support. Chapter 9 is about the public education that the children receive and they are not always able to participate in classes to their full potential because of health problems, which goes back to the health issues discussed in the previous chapter. The government institutions that prevent the families from utilizing their care are also in a way debilitating the kids learning because the students lose motivation, lower their expectations, and oftentimes drop out. Chapter 10 is a bit more of an optimistic chapter in the book as it shows the positive sides of this “part of the world”. These are some of the “success stories” that can be the outcome of living in