$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.67 (731 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B012E8RDS2 |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 562 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-01-17 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
They are the would-be working class, with hundreds of job applications submitted in recent months and thousands of work hours logged in past years. Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank estimates that extreme poverty can be eliminated in 17 years. This is clearly cause for celebration. That figure, the World Bank measure of poverty, is hard to imagine in this country - most of us spend more than that before we get to work or school in the morning. In $2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, Kathryn Edin and Luke Schaefer introduce us to people like Jessica Compton, who survives by donating plasma as often as 10 times a month and spends hours with her young children in the public library so she can get access to an Internet connection for job-hunting; and like Modonna Harris who lost the cashier's job she had held for years, for the sake of $7.00 misplaced at the end of the day. Twenty years after William Julius Wilson's When Work Disappears, it's still all about the work. But as Edin and Shaefer illuminate through incisive analysis and indelible human story, the combination of a government safety net built on the ability to work and a low-wage labor market increasingly designed not to deliver a living wage has delivered a vicious one-two punch to the would-be working poor. However,
Dame Droiture said A solid and perhaps time-sensitive read. This book makes me want to thank my mother, profusely, for everything she did for me/us while I was growing up. Until reading this exposé, I hadn't really realized that some of her own strategies *were* actually strategies -- I just thought that, for example, going to the library a few times a week was what everyone did.It also made me think to the time I spent living in the Bronx during grad school (yes!), making dismal adjunct wages relative to New York City living conditions. My neighbors would occasionally see me out reading . Eye Opening Look At Poverty in America Today Poverty has been with us since the founding of the country, and most likely will always exist to some extent. The question we need to ask ourselves what level of poverty are we willing to tolerate? This book examines poverty in America today and what possible changes could eliminate the worst poverty that we find.Imagine if you had to live on $2.00 a day, with no other cash available. Either you find a place to sleep with friends, relatives or you spend time in a shelter until you are not allowed to stay any longer. Imagine, to, that yo. "Its a better read than you think" according to Jonathan Jones. I have seen newspaper articles about this book and the aritcles made me purchase the book. It wasn't exactly what I that I thought it would be, it as so much better, because the book makes you think about not only your situation but others. Years ago back in the early 80's I was driving through southern Ohio and remarked that these houses reminded my of the time that I was on a bus in South Korea. I have seen poverty around the world and I really didn't realize how bad it had gotten in the United States. I had been on welfare & food sta