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Summary Of Not) Getting By In America By Barbara Ehrenreich

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The first reading we were given for this week was Nickel-And-Dimed on (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. This reading narrates the writer’s undercover experiment to find out how non-skilled, low waged workers make ends meet. The goal of the experiment was to see whether or not the author had enough money solely from the low paying job to provide for herself and also pay for the next month’s rent. Her first task was to find a place to live while she was staying in Key West Florida. She assumed that she would be paid roughly $7 an hour and could afford to spend $500 on rent. She eventually finds a trailer to live in for the two weeks that she would be staying in the city. After finding somewhere to live, she then found a job as …show more content…
Although these elite make up only about 1% of the United States population they also earned 15.7% of the nation’s annual income. Since they are such a large source of the country’s income, they have a significant role in the basic function of the country and therefore have an almost permanent role at the top of the social hierarchy. These large corporations, banks, and businesses come together and form a corporate community which dominates the federal government and their real estates, construction, and land developments dominate the local governments as well, growth coalitions. Although these corporate rich do have the power to influence the government, they are not the dominant class. The dominant class has “the power to set the terms under which other groups and classes must operate, not total control”; this is the majority. The dominant class is the blue collar workers who toil for the corporations and who have the ability to stop the inflow of cash into the pockets of the rich if they simply stop working. The end of this article explains that although the power elite are at the top now, life is unpredictable and power structures are not fixed and can be

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