“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.)
Essay Option:
Addressing Barbara Ehrenreich's "How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty" and Linda Tirado's famous blog post, write a 4-page essay with 3 sources with a thesis that supports or refutes the argument that poverty is not a "lifestyle choice" but a self-perpetuating trap.
Sample Thesis
Ehrenreich and Tirado'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 Tirado 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.
Point: Your topic sentence
Evidence: Your supporting details
Explanation: Your analysis of the supporting details
Link: You are linking or connecting your explanation back to your main point
The California woman who relied on the dubious practices of a fertility doctor to give birth to 14 children, has become a national demon who stirs our most primitive fears and hostilities and compels us to gather our pitchforks and torches and to chase her from our midst. Her demonic reputation exists in part because she has become a metaphor for the malignant parasite whose ravenous, pathological appetite to bear bus loads of children with legal and government sanction stirs the general public’s greatest Malthusian nightmare: Paying the hefty tax tab to cater to the wild irresponsible desire of an emotionally-arrested woman whose sole passions in life are to bear more children than she can take care of and to liken her image to celebrity goddess Angelina Jolie. Her reputation as a monster is reinforced by her very title, Octo-Mom, which suggests a malevolent invader who bears similarities to the pod creatures inInvasion of the Body Snatchers. Our resentment is vindicated when it is reported that she and her children will live in luxury paid for by the generosity of others, thus making us feel like it is the grossly irresponsible in this world who are rewarded while the rest of us who play by the rules having nothing to look forward to in this life except for getting punked. This collective doom we share that the irrational sucker fish of the world laugh at us while we play by the rules feels like an insult, and this insult, this disrespect for the moral lives we try to lead, presses our buttons and makes us hostile creatures.
Sentence Fragments
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Sentence Fragment Exercises
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons
Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.
One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.
Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.
Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.
Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.
Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.
Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.
Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.
Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.
Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.
Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.
Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.
Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.
Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.
Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.
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