"The Surging Cost of Basic Needs"
"Poverty Compounded" from The Atlantic
Essay Option That Connects Tirado, Uchitelle, DePalma, and Vice News video:
In the context of Linda Tirado's essay, Louis Uchitelle's (342), DePalma's (353), and the Vice News video series (Vice News video, Part 1 and Part 6 are the most relevant to our purposes), develop a thesis that analyzes the way the tightening job market affects our emotional and professional connection to work. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 minimum sources.
McMahon's Approach to the Above Prompt (Sample Thesis Attempts)
The essays in Chapter 5 evidence a fracturing of Americans' connection with work because the majority of America's economic growth is getting funneled to the 1% resulting in learned helplessness, a strictly business approach to education, a reinforced economic caste system, and lowered expectations for the American Dream.
Critique of the Above
Perhaps the writer is trying to cover too much. Perhaps the writer needs sharper focus:
The essays in Chapter 5 show that as the 1% gobble up most of America's economic gains, the average American is succumbing to learned helplessness evidenced by ___________________, ____________________, _______________, and __________________.
The essays in Chapter 5 show that the American Dream of upward social mobility is a myth evidenced by ___________________, ___________________, ____________________, and ______________________.
Sources for the above could include a study of "The American Myth of Social Mobility" and "Community College Students Often Fail to Achieve Bachelor's Degree."
Another Thesis Attempt
The essays in Chapter 5 show that now more than ever millennials must approach college strictly as a business decision based on cost-benefit analysis, demand for intended major, economic forecasts, and strict budgetary discipline.
“The Case for Working with Your Hands” by Matthew Crawford
Study Questions
One. Why do office workers hunger for “confrontations with material reality” that have become “exotically unfamiliar”?
Too often in a big workforce, we feel like a cog in a machine or a mouse on a treadmill.
"Cubicle life" eats you from the inside until you're a hollow cipher, a zero.
We feel so alienated in our offices, sensing no “tangible result” of our work, that we crave the kind of connection that comes from getting our hands dirty.
High school has becoming a training center for turning human beings into alienated cubicle workers who are powerless and disconnected from life.
Crawford observes that “It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.”
Sitting all the time, in fact, has proven bad for one’s health.
We are also envious of watching people who are useful in a way that is straightforward and direct such as painting a bedroom. The effect is immediate.
Because our worth is concrete, we prove our value at the workplace; in contrast, a cubicle job is often at the mercy of bureaucratic whim and arbitrary decisions by some confused manager who’s under pressure to downsize.
Two. Why does Crawford argue certain types of physical labor are growing in demand?
Because he points out, quoting Princeton economist Alan Blinder, that “the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site.”
Yet we shun physical labor, Crawford writes, because it makes us dirty and we conflate dirt with stupidity.
Three. What kind of jobs give us the gratification from seeing the direct result?
1. chef or cook
2. novelist
3. musician
4. musical composer for film
5. painter
6. mechanic
7. interior decorator
8. style consultant
9. therapist
10. teacher (sometimes)
11. personal trainer
12. dietician
13. actuarial mathematician (risk assessment)
14. engineer (environment, water)
15. dog trainer
16. veterinarian
17. non-profit fund raiser
18. public relations for crisis management
19. bodyguard
20. national security operative (however, no one gives you credit when you do things right. You only take blame when one thing goes wrong)
21. actor
22. matchmaker
23. doctor
24. nurse
25. health care worker
26. Center for Disease Control operative
27. journalist
28. special ops fighter
29. charity fund raiser operative
30. life coach (99% of life coaches are frauds and mountebanks but there should be a few good ones out there)
31. movie critic
32. book critic
Writing Option
In a 4-page essay with 3 sources, develop a thesis that compares the way Louis Uchitelle (342) and Matthew Crawford (368) explore the emotional life of work and how work affects our happiness, contentment, and self-esteem. To what extent does Uchitelle's argument about the psychological damage wrought by unemployment recall or help reinforce Crawford's claims about the emotional satisfactions afforded by working with your hands?
You might look at these mapping points that are in common with Uchitelle's and Crawford's essay.
Consider the anxiety of being replaceable.
Consider how feeling powerless at work creates anxieties and a sense of disconnection and alienation at work.
Consider how there are jobs where you feed your sense of self-worth and other jobs that feed your sense of worthlessness.
Consider how there are jobs where you see your role in the overall product and overall jobs where you feel like a tiny cog in the machine.
Consider this essay on American job burnout.
Sample Thesis
Too many young people embark upon a career without a necessary grasp of how many jobs can, in spite of their healthy salary, become a threat to their mental health because of the jobs' tendency to _____________, ______________, ______________, and __________________.
“How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty” by Barbara Ehrenreich
Study Questions
One. How are the poor robbed?
They are exploited and robbed in thousands of tiny cuts that leave them eviscerated, bereft, and hopeless.
They pay more for cars.
They pay higher interest rates on loans, up to 600%, which is legal in some states.
They pay in terms of stolen wages (employers can program computers to shave a few dollars off each paycheck).
They pay in terms of being preyed upon by police for civil forfeiture laws in which police can take money, cars, valuables of any kind, by saying it was money “seized in a drug deal” with no need for evidence, no need for arrest, and no need for any kind of trial.
They have to pay for family members’ incarceration or else be fined and subject to arrest and imprisonment themselves.
The sub-prime market preys upon the poor.
The poor can go to prison if they don’t show up to court to address a debt to a landlord or collections agency.
The government will confiscate the drivers’ licenses of the poor in the event they owe child support (which can’t be paid because they’re, well, poor) and now they can’t drive to work to earn their minimum wage.
If the poor cannot pay their overdue traffic fines in Las Cruces, New Mexico, they will be fined by having their water, gas, and sewage turned off.
Once the poor, who are more likely to get into trouble with the law, have a criminal record, they cannot find work for they now suffer a permanent stigma.
At this point, the poor are more likely to be homeless at which point they may “get busted for an offense like urinating in public or sleeping on a sidewalk.” (I keep thinking of the metaphor “squeezing blood from a turnip.)
In a 4-page essay with 3 sources, develop a thesis that compares the way DePalma (353) profiles immigrant workers with the way Ehrenreich (380) explores the working poor. Based on the argument she makes here, which specific aspects of DePalma's essay do you think Ehrenreich would find most persuasive? Why?
Sample Thesis
Ehrenreich and DePalma's essay refute the rhetoric that any person, no matter how poor, can lift herself out of poverty with strong character, determination, and hard work by showing that poverty is a self-reinforcing cycle evidenced by _______________, ______________, _______________, and _____________________.
Thesis That Disagrees with the Above
While Ehrenreich and DePalma do a good job of highlighting the risk factors for cycles of poverty, they do little to offer the poor strategies to free themselves from their impoverishment and as such their rigid liberal political agendas do more harm than good because their vision paints the poor as helpless victims who must rely on policy changes before they find relief from their interminable economic hell.
Gary Rivlin discusses his book Broke USA on Fresh Air.
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Essential and Nonessential Clauses
Birthdays that land on a Monday are a bummer.
Birthdays, which can be costly, are overrated.
Circle the relative clause and indicate if it’s essential with a capital E or nonessential with a capital N. Then use commas where necessary.
One. I’m looking for a sugar substitute that doesn’t have dangerous side effects.
Two. Sugar substitutes which often contain additives can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous system.
Three. The man who trains in the gym every day for five hours is setting himself up for a serious muscle injury.
Four. Cars that operate on small turbo engines don’t last as long as non-turbo automobiles.
Five. Tuna which contains high amounts of mercury should only be eaten once or twice a week.
Six. The store manager who took your order has been arrested for fraud.
Seven. The store manager Ron Cousins who is now seventy-five years old is contemplating retirement.
Eight. Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts which is my favorite novel was runner up for the Booker Prize.
Nine. Parenthood which is a sort of priesthood for which there is no pay or appreciation raises stress and cortisol levels.
Ten. I need to find a college that specializes in my actuarial math major.
Eleven. UCLA which has a strong actuarial math program is my first choice.
Twelve. My first choice of car is the Lexus which was awarded top overall quality honors from Consumer Reports.
Thirteen. Mangoes which sometimes cause a rash on my lips and chin area are my favorite fruit.
Fourteen. A strange man whom I’ve never known came up to me and offered to give me his brand new Mercedes.
Fifteen. My girlfriend who was showing off her brand new red dress arrived two hours late to the birthday party.
Sixteen. Students who meticulously follow the MLA format rules have a greater chance at success.
Seventeen. The student who tormented himself with the thesis lesson for six hours found himself more confused than before he started.
Eighteen. There are several distinctions between an analytical and argumentative thesis which we need to familiarize ourselves with before we embark on the essay assignment.
Nineteen. The peach that has a worm burrowing through its rotted skin should probably be tossed in the garbage.
Twenty. Peaches, which I love to eat by the bucketful are on sale at the farmer’s market.
Twenty-one. Baseball which used to be America’s pastime is declining in popularity.
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