Monday, November 1, 2010

Uneducated Low Wage Workers

Working without an education can prove to be difficult. In the richest country in the world, being educated, going to college, and earning multiple degrees is often stressed toward the public who want to live securely without financial trouble. In order to secure a decent job with a reasonable pay, one must go through many years of schooling to be educated enough to handle the job and must beat out the competition of other educated individuals. The majority of Americans have become educated solely for the sake of landing a secure job and not necessarily to learn for the sake of learning. However, those individuals who aren’t lucky enough to go to school to earn that degree are stuck in poverty because of their lack of qualifications for high paying jobs.

Even though I have not experienced working without an education, I have had many close friends and family who are barely surviving through their minimum wage job. For instance, my cousin who is now a full grown adult, is barely surviving working as a minimum wage worker. A drop out of college, she never earned the degree that could have potentially changed her current lifestyle. Working many various jobs one right after the other on minimum wage has her barely able to afford the bare necessities for herself. She is lucky to have a family that allows her to live in their house without paying rent. However, without her loving family, she would be out on the streets homeless with the pay she is currently earning. While working, she is attending night classes to get a bachelors degree in hopes of landing a more secure job.

My own parents and grandparents have experienced the same thing. Coming to the United States as immigrants, my grandparents knew they would have to live with minimum wage. Since my grandparents were poor, my parents grew up poor and were not able to afford proper schooling that could have lead to higher paying jobs. Because of this, they only worked in jobs they paid minimum wage and also had the help from other family members by providing shelter and food whenever they needed it.

Many Americans are not as lucky as my family. If they work for a job that pays minimum wage, they are often left to live on the streets, barely surviving. Some of these people can be blamed for dropping out of school and not continuing their education and therefore pay the consequences of these low paying jobs. Others, however, cannot help that the fact that they are not fortunate enough to become educated and therefore have the qualifications to land a high paying job. Are uneducated low wage workers to blame for their misfortunates?

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