Nickel-and-Dimed

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I truely am not sure what type of calculation the United States government does in order to agree on minimum wage.  They feel that the set wage is enough for a family to eat, have shelter, have clothing?  Where is it that they see this happening? I personally, have lived and visited many, many different parts of this great country.  I have seen the poorest parts of Mississippi and I have seen the richest parts of New York City.  I can not imagine a family of four surviving on less than eight dollars on hour.

Yes, I admit there are plenty of government assistance plans out there. However, they do not take the burden of the parents’ backs who are bringing home eight dollar an hour paychecks.  These plans help, sure, but they do not make things easy.  The hoops you have to jump through, the stigma you carry, the embarrassment and loss of dignity you feel when you sit across the desk from someone you imagine has never been in your shoes, and you say, “I can’t feed my children”, or “The heating company turned off my heat”.  As Barbara Ehrenreich says in her article, “I am ‘baby,’ ‘honey,’ ‘blondie,’ and, most commonly, ‘girl’.”  Then there are the many, many families who do not qualify.  Those who make one hundred dollars a month too much. Those families are turned away and left to fend for themselves. 

In Barbara’s article she has a job paying her $7 an hour. With this pay she finds herself an apartment for $500 a month.  This is so incredibly unrealistic in my opinion.  Living here in Berkshire County, you would most likely get a job at about $8 an hour.  If you are single with no children, sure, you could find a one bedroom apartment for $500 a month or less. However, if you are a single mother with at least one child, according to the law, you must have at least a two bedroom apartment.  In this area you are looking at paying more around $600 or $700 a month. Most daycares charge around $200 a week for a full time slot.  Then of course there are your regular utilities, your vehicle if you have one, bus passes if you don’t, groceries, clothing… it goes on and on. 

I understand as Americans we are lucky to have the programs in place that we have.  I am even one who is lucky enough to be on a couple of them.  However, I am one who has to do the hoop jumping and the dignity loosing.  It is possible to live on minimum wage. But not with dependants, not without government assistance. Like Ehrenreich states at the end, “The thinking behind welfare reform was that even the humblest jobs are morally uplifting and psycologically buoying.  In reality they are likely to be fraught with insult and stress.” 

Unless you are one of the lucky few to break the cycle and get out of poverty levels, you will continue to face the burdens and struggles along with the indignities and insults.

Population

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Our growing population is off the charts. There are over 6 billion people on Earth today. Not just people either, there are plenty of other life forms that also arise here as well. As we continue to live in these tough times, we must realize that bringing another child into the world will only make our personal economy situation much worse. Bringing a baby in this world means more money to feed it, bath it, clothe it, etc. In America, we are educated on how to prevent pregnancies. We have condoms and birth control, the two main things that prevent pregnancy. However, there are people that just do not want to do this thus they suffer the consequence on having the baby, whether they wanted to or not. I completely agree with Smail that we have to find a way to lower our population rate. Earth is becoming crowded, and the fact that he states that Earth may only be able to support a global human population in the 2 to 3 billion range at a comfortable living really is alarming (pg 413). We need to stop this now or things are going to get out of hand. Times are now worse than ever, we need to do what is necessary to survive. We must cut down on population growth.

By Jeffrey V

Women and the birth of Sociology

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The history of sociology’s theories is conventionally told as a history of white male agency, these are based on the contributions from the generation of male sociologists.  The claim that a group has been written out of history is different from the claim that  group has been invisible. What it means to be invisible is to be not seen. Being written out suggests that having once been seen as a presence in a community and then having been erased from its record. this happened due to the fact that I believe that women were not treated as equal to the men of sociology. Many of these women knew each other and the work that they had done. Many of them read Gilman’s book Women and Economics. Many of these women all tried to analyze the problem of race. Jane Addams, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Sophonisba Breckinridge, and Florence Kelley all were participants in the founding of the NAACP. These women knew that they were part of of larger movement, and history, to create a type of science of society and believed that they had their own sense of what that science is or should be. Women due vary in their opinions with many different sociological issues, but they do all agree that their intellect on sociology and their perspective was just as good as the men’s were. The only difference was that in the retelling of sociology, magically the women just disappeared.

By Jeffrey V

(Not) Getting by in America

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I have read the entire book published by the author of this chapter. I found it very interesting. While reading this chapter I was not surprised with what I read. The author not having enough financially with only one minimum wage job.  The very last comment she made was the observation of camaraderie and support between the people who work these types of jobs. This made me think of the two social classes that Karl Marx described – the owners and the laborers. The laborers, in this case the minimum-wage workers, gravitate towards each other in communities.

2. The only time I’ve held a job like the ones described this chapter, is during the summers during my college career. During this time I worked full-time in the fast-food industry. The only way I could mentally keep sane, was knowing I was returning to school in the fall. I felt like I could never hold down this kind of job without having a goal of a bachelor’s degree. Getting up day in and day out to work at a job for a wage that would barely support just myself, I could never do long term. I admire the author for being able to commit to what she did for the time she did, for going through the struggles she did and learning what she did. Working for a low wage was definitely motivation for me to finish my degree!

3. A livable minimum-wage would definitely depend on where a person lives. Different parts of the country cost different amounts on a monthly basis. So determining a minimum wage would be difficult. I do think, though, that society should be encouraged more to live in a more cooperatively way. Meaning, family generations should live together if possible, sharing in the upbringing of children, sharing the costs of living, food and other expenses. I think that’s the answer to our troubled economy. Generations (in families) working together more.

Population Growth

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          Smail says that it would take at least two to three generations for the population to be at a stable level because of the “powerful population momentum” (414).  The fact that nearly one third of the world population is under the age of fifteen and has not yet reproduced.  When Smail is talking about the Earth carrying capacity he looks at it in terms of resources and it long-term.  The resources that he is talking about is inexpensive energy from fossil fuels, food supplies from plant or animal, raw material such as wood and minerals, fresh water, and readily accessible open space.  Smail is referring to long-term as over the span of several hundred years.  Over that time frame he states that it “is rapidly coming to a close” (415).  His solution to solving the problem is, to have a fully effective program of zero population growth but this will not stop the momentum of the population, unless there is a deadly pandemic or a devastating world war.  I think that Smail mean by his statement is that this Earth does not belong to us and we should treat it as such.  We need to find a way to control our population so we don’t over run the Earth.  We are the stewards of the Earth and we need to do a better job at it, because the way I see it, we are going to force ourselves into starvation or worse, extinction. BY BARRY

Domestic Violence

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1a. Domestic Violence is similar in India, Japan, Vietnam and Africa because they all have some type of domestic violence in their country but it differs because each country has their own form of violence. There is family violence, which means that in a household child abuse and wife battering occur on a regular basis? In Japan wife battering happens when the husband beats his wife on a regular basis and usually it first starts out with a hit and then sometimes it can lead to a deadly assault. Then there is just plain of’ domestic violence that occurs in African and Vietnam. Wife battering is common in industrial countries such as Japan and the United States because even though the United States isn’t as organized as Japan that doesn’t mean that wife battering doesn’t happen. It mostly happens because the women will try to get out of an abusive relationship by breaking up or getting a divorce but that’s when the real beating starts. The man is not ready to let go yet and he takes his anger out on his women. Or it could be that the man is so tired and stressed out from work and one little thing like forgetting to make dinner could lead the women in very rough shape. Even though there are laws in the United States for wife battering it still happens and Japan needs to get recognized with the problem they are having with wife battering.

2. Most women in these countries never complain about domestic violence because for fear that if their husband or boyfriend were to find out they would hurt them. They also think that it happens a lot they think it is normal so there is no need to report it to anyone, it’s no big deal. They think that it is an ‘everyday affair’ so there is no need to report it. The individual, legal, historical and cultural factors help explain the silence of women, because in India it is historical and cultural to have a boy. So if the wife has a boy for a child they don’t have to worry about getting beat. If you plan to have birth control 9 chances out of 10, you are going to get beaten. Form of birth control is considered bad in India.It’s the sociological expectations. The indiviual factor is that it’s ok that the man beats his wife when he’s drunk because he is drunk he can’t control anything, he doesn’t know what he is doing. If he doesn’t drink and beat someone, he is a wonderful kind man.

3. When Leeder urges the reader to suspend “any ethnocentric value judgements” about family violence is because she means for the reader to not think about enthnocentricism which means don’t judge a culture by your own culture and beliefs. She doesn’t want you to think of Indian men as terrible people because not all of them beat their wife. She wants us to think that the United States and India are two totally different countries and we have different values and cultures that we seem to live by.

By: Nicole

Invisible Privilege

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Privilege is invisible because you can’t see it. It is something you have that you can’t control. I think minorities are more likely to be aware of privilege because they are the ones that don’t get it as easily. Andrea was uncomfortable in Jewels home because she was not used to being the minority in the room and she wasn’t used to that kind of poverty. I think if people try not to judge each other and realize that people are doing the best they can then they can overcome these kinds of social differences. I am privileged to have a nice home, job, and car.

Domestic Violence

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We have entered the last month of 2010, and with that, one would assume that the world, globally, would be moving ahead. But after reading this chapter I am amazed at how little domestic violence has changed. The United States media puts a stigma on domestic violence and laws forbid it, but it still happens in many homes. This was not very surprising to me. I suspect that domestic violence is fueled by many men’s deep control issues (however it is not limited to men). Violence in India shocked me however. The fact that domestic violence is only ever spoken of if it is very violent, or how both men and women find it acceptable if the wife is “misbehaving.” Misbehaving by who’s standards? The husband’s? And the husband is not discouraged from beating her. He is given several “justifiable” reasons to blame the abuse on. The only reason I can find that helps me understand why women may tolerate and accept the abuse, is because they are given no other alternative. Women can try to live on their own but because it is extremely hard to get a good paying job (no where near a man’s wage) and the stigma assigned to leaving her husband women stay. They are also taught from the beginning that men are more valuable and that women just “drain” their family economically. Without having options, role models, or enlightenment to an entirely different life  style, they have no other choice but to accept being married and abused.

In Japan, women do have the option to leave their husbands and be financially secure, but there are no strict laws to protect them from their husbands. In Vietnam women suffer from “invisible violence” -going home after work and working their second shift as mother and housewife- and “visible violence.” And in Uganda, domestic abuse is seen as “part of the culture.” We are transitioning into the year 2011 and yet, the world is still accepting the abuse and oppression of women and children. Although much of this violence takes place in rural areas it takes place among many college graduates living in Urban areas as well. Something must be done.

-Olga

Prostitution

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  1. Farley claims that prostitution is not a free choice because most people involved in prostitution don’t have any other options to get the basic necessities in life. She even goes on to talk about how one prostitute in the Netherlands called prostitution “volunteer slavery”. And that the women involved in prostitution are the ones without the choices. I personally believe that prostitution is a free choice. Yes there are people out there who  are desperate and think they have no other options in life but to resort to bad behaviors but there is always other options besides selling yourself. You could work multiple part time jobs.  You ultimately choose to become a prostitute so it is a choice.
  2. People tend to choose their prostitutes based on what they look like, their preferences so usually there are certain types of prostitutes.  Also people of lower class are more likely to be desperate enough for money to resort to prostitution so the lower class are more likely to be prostitutes. The lower class tends to be made up of minorities like African Americans and immigrants so they are usually more likely to become prostitutes. Prostitution keeps the people involved in it in the class their already in. So it oppresses the minorities, certain races and certain sexes because they are more likely to become prostitutes.
  3. IN legal terms according to Farley legalization would give the state or local authorities the position to control prostitution. They in terms act as “the pimp” in the situation. Offering up zoning areas for certain people. I would be a lot safer because then prostitutes would be required to have STD tests. Also it would gain the state money from taxes and such. Decriminalization, Farley is saying, would give men the right to abuse women and children. Which isn’t true because legalization would make women more able to take legal action against men who have harmed them. And it wouldn’t be legal prostitution for anyone under 18, which the state could regulate.

By Shauna

Not Getting By

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  1. In the first paragraph i was surprised to find that someone would give up their comfortable lifestyle to try and see what t like being a poor working class person. I was also surprised to find out that 50,000 mothers entire welfare a day. I was surprised at how dedicated she was to the task she had ahead of her but at the same time someone in her shoes really couldn’t eliminate jobs just because they didn’t wanna stand still all day. What really surprised me was the true stories of the people who she worked with. All of them unhappy with their lives and all of them not making enough money to be satisfied. But yet t the same time none of this surprised me because i know that this is the situation for almost everyday in America right now.
  2. I’ve had about 4 jobs since i was 14. I worked at a supermarket for almost a year when i was 14. Which i had to deal with pleasing rude customers. I briefly had a summer job at the Itam lodge working events to please customers. For 2 years when i was 15-17 i worked at Bennigans Grill an Tavern and my job was exactly  like the one described in the book. I wasn’t a waitress i was a hostess but we still took orders or drink orders and had to keep the customers happy in hopes of making enough tips to pay all my bills i have. Even as a hostess i didn’t make minimum wage.
  3. Minimum wage in the U.S. right now is $8.00 an hour. But that is defiantly not enough to get by. To live comfortably in this country to need to make upwards of $50,000 a year. And i would say the average American is either unemployed to not even making anywhere close to that. They’re making something close to $25,000 which is not enough to survive having a place to live and having food especially if you have a family too.

By: Shauna