How can a low-wage worker improve himself? School is a viable solution, but how is a minimum wage worker supposed to pay the sky-high tuitions of higher education? Statistics, and Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, show us these people can barley afford to eat on their wages let alone pay for, or even save for, an education. Without education, a better job is impossible so around the vicious cycle we go.
A solution to this would be to simply pay them more; to raise the minimum wage. Supporters if this proposition would argue that we would, essentially, be raising the standard of life along with it. This solution would also create higher tax revenues, which for a liberal, amounts to more public money to spend on the greater good, or to a conservative, would mean more money to pay off the federal deficit. Opponents to this proposition would say that if business were forced to pay workers more money, they would be unable to afford to hire new workers and maybe even be forced to lay some employees off. Raising the minimum wage would also raise the potential inflation. In effect, this action would help the worker but hurt the business (which indirectly hurts the worker as well). The view of society is that the poor are poor because they are lazy and don't want to work. This makes the upper class reluctant to help, claiming it is the responsibility of the worker to work their way up the corporate ladder. Overall, this digs the working class into an unfavorable rut which society makes it impossible to climb out of.
In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich talks about how some of her co-workers were in fact not lazy, like society makes them out to be, but they would hide their skills so their bosses would not over use and take advantage of them. She says, "at Wal-mart, a co-worker once advised me that, although I had a lot to learn, it was also important not to "know too much", or at least never to reveal one's full abilities to management, because "the more they think you can do, the more they"ll use you and abuse you".
