Robert Reich’s work described a metaphor of three boats; one
that is sinking quickly, one that is sinking slowly, and the last is rising.
These boats represent the lower, middle, and upper class. Barbara Ehrenriech
tells her own more personal story of how it is impossible to live off of
minimum wage. She goes from state to state looking for jobs near cheap safe
living. I feel like these two essays differ because of the different
perspectives. Barbara writes from a very personal place, she writes about how she
herself did all of these different things. She went to different states. Got
different jobs, and looked for different places to live. Her hypothesis was
that you could not go out and live off of only minimum wage. How she proved
this to her readers was by actually going out and trying to do these things
herself. Robert brings his hypothesis of why he thinks the social classes are
changing. Not from personal experience, but because of what he thinks.
Machinery is taking over the lower class jobs. Machines are much cheaper and
faster. Workers need time off. Workers need to be paid for their work. Workers
get benefits. Workers need so many things that machines don’t, so it only makes
sense for workers to be replaced. Though I do feel bad about people not having
jobs and not being able to afford certain luxuries I would replace workers as
well. If I were a business owner I would want things done with the least amount
of mistakes, the cheapest, and the fastest. To decide how to best solve the
worlds economic problems we have to first know what that problem is. I believe
that the world’s economic problems come from the lack of jobs. By creating more jobs there would be more
people paying on taxes on the money they earn. By people earning more money
they would then spend more money. With people buying more things there would
again be more taxes on the things that they were buying. Thus creating an overall
increase in taxes without actually raising the taxes being taken.
What Preston is noting for us in this blog is a summary of the readings “Hiding from Reality”, “Is the American Dream Over?”, and “Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer”- a summary in which he states the topics touched on in these essays and their basic points in no more than two sentences. These claims are then used to support his idea that the world’s economic poverty comes from lack of jobs, which result in people having less money to purchase items from stores and keep the economy thriving. I can agree with this claim that Preston makes, for he does in fact put himself in their shoes, and knows where he is going with his summary- making this blog not quite so dull. By sympathizing with both points of view Preston “puts himself in their shoes”, which makes for a more interesting reading experience. This is done by stating that yes, he does feel bad for the lack of jobs, but if he were in the place of the factory managers he would indeed cut jobs in order to have less needy machines. While poverty due to unemployment is a bad thing, having a machine doing work and not a human that needs pay, compensation, and days off does benefit the company in the long run. He then states that he feels the lack of jobs is what is causing economic recession, and Preston refrains from constantly backing up his believes with dull and repetitive “they say”s.
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