gender inequalities are the effect of larger systems

It is the tone of a woman almost in touch with her anger, who is determined not to appear angry, who is willing herself to be calm, detached, and even charming

However, off the printed page, women have primarily played second-class roles, kept in place by men determined to dominate them.

Through her personal study, Ehrenreich sees the futility of the American dream as her various co-workers desperately attempt to break through their social strata and leave the life of the "working poor" behind. But housing and transportation costs, medical bills, and the price of basic needs create obstacles that are often insurmountable. Though Ehrenreich still sees hope and a strong drive to succeed within this community, she fears a future uprising as people "are bound to tire of getting so little in return and to demand to be paid what they're worth. There'll be a lot of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption."

When one is charged a little bit at a time until the expense grows beyond expectations, that is called being "nickel and dimed." In 2001's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, essayist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich applies this notion to minimum-wage workers. She argues that their spirit and dignity are chipped away by a culture that allows unjust and unlivable working conditions, which results in their becoming a de facto, or actual without being official, servant class.

In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich shows that the federally set minimum wage adds up to a monthly income that barely covers the basic necessities that one needs to survive. As such, many workers need a second job in order to feed, clothe, and house their families

In her book on the working poor, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich describes this housing process: Unable to afford housing with a kitchen, the worker cannot purchase foods to prepare in bulk and cannot store or freeze these foods. Such workers are sometimes entirely dependent on meals they can purchase and eat immediately, such as fast-food

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (2001) both offer accounts of the hazards and tribulations of lower-class occupations.

Though the author's methods are unscientific, and her perspective is as biased as Sinclair's, she nonetheless draws an alarming picture of the state of America's lowest-class citizens: the work they perform is back-breaking, the pay is low, and job security is nonexistent.

Schlosser writes that "more than half of all American adults and about one-quarter of all American children are now obese or overweight

Companies with brands associated with the salmonellosis outbreak recalled all potentially contaminated products, including peanut butter for home use and commercial peanut butter products used by some fast-food chains. The Salmonella-contaminated foods associated with outbreak affected approximately 370 people in over 40 states

by centralizing the slaughterhouses, by using cheap, often immigrant labor and, in Schlosser's words, "by crushing labor unions and championing the ruthless efficiency of the market"

slaughter

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal maintains that the enormous growth of the fast-food industry has caused conditions in the big slaughterhouses to pose serious health concerns

the hundreds of thousands of families that fled drought- and dust-ravaged farms in the Midwest to earn money as fruit, vegetable, and cotton pickers in California's fertile fields. Masses of fleeing workers endured a treacherous trek west only to find little work and unfair wages when they arrived

By 1935 the farmlands in these areas suffered severe erosion of their topsoil causing a large number of farmers to abandon their land and move to other regions

Steinbeck even describes the banks themselves as hungry beasts

It also reveals the terrible working and living conditions of migrant workers in California. Packed into camps with little running water, the Joads struggle to find low-paid work on fruit farms.

The progressives revealed how these companies eliminated competition, set high prices, and treated workers as "wage slaves."

His novel The Jungle, published in 1906, led to institutional changes in the handling of meat, but it did not necessarily have much effect on the protection of workers

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