David K. Shipler's The Working Poor

1985 Words8 Pages
Every person who is seeking for opportunities turns to the United States because people want to live “The American Dream”. The ideals of the American dream are: Democracy, Rights, Liberty, Opportunity, and Equality in where freedom includes opportunities and success not only that but a higher class rank for the family. The only way to get to that point is by working hard and having little to no barriers. However the book “The Working Poor” by David K. Shipler shows, contrary in where the author describes the lives of people who are in or near poverty explaining their situation and how they got into poverty and can’t seem able to escape it. The reason for this is because the poor are being abused by public and private institutions and their…show more content…
People often hear or see offers that seem appealing and they fall for the trap. It is so easy to end up in debt because people don’t notice that they are being tricked, especially for those people who are misinformed about certain programs and end up taking the wrong decisions. That not only the reason why, but the people are given loans and they get into the habit of just spending money because they get easy access to the loans they are given. For example, they end up not knowing how doing paper work for income pay,W-2s, earned income pay tax credit, Internal revenue service and they end up getting little to no money. People usually just sign a contract that seems right to them and don't bother asking because they believe that they are being truthful with them. “ Hector and Maribel Delgado, who earned about $28,000 a year picking and packing vegetables in North Carolina, were stunned when I sat with them in their trailer, looked over their tax return, and explained how it all worked. They had paid Block $109 to prepare their return, file it electronically, and give them an advance on their payment from the IRS of $1,307.05. The form they had signed disclosed a finance charge of 69.888 percent annually, but they had not understood it. Even as block employees presented a contract in fine print, they were trained to avoid the word “loan” and say “two-day refunds” instead..”…show more content…
This leads people to stay silent and continue to be abused in the working conditions they are set in to work. People aren't aware of the rights they have when it comes to working the type of jobs they are placed in like sewing. This is why it is so easy for the people hiring the workers to use them in the way they do of exceeding working hours and getting low wages with no benefits. The bosses are aware that the people are afraid of detection and deportation so they use it against. “with promises of well-paid sewing jobs in the United States. Upon arrival, the workers were practically enslaved in a two story apartment complex in El Monte, just east of Los Angeles. They ate,slept, and worked behind razor wire and windows covered with plywood. For seventeen or eighteen hours a day, they were forced to sew and assemble clothing for major manufactures… The worker’s wages amounted to less than a dollar an hour, from which the Thai organizers subtracted the cost of groceries, inflated by a factor of four or five. Without medical care, the laborers suffered from various aliments; because of untreated gum disease, one had to pull out eight of his own teeth” (Shipler,80). The people are promised to have a good paying job, but in reality are being tricked this then leads on to them having to work even if they don’t want to. “They were told that
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