Everybody must work. Life cannot be passed in idleness. The grass must be cut, the child must be fed, and the elderly person must be helped across the street. To feel healthy we must work out, and if we have a muscle cramp we cannot sit and cry like a child, rather we must work out our stiffness and soreness with stretching. However, when we hear the word "work," quite often what comes to mind is not merely effort in the sense of expending energy, but paid labor. America has always idealized the value of making one's fortune from nothing, working by the sweat of one's brow, much as is depicted in Richard Rodriguez's essay on "Los Pobres." However, Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African-American, would caution that not all work is inherently dignifying. Work must uplift the mind as well as the body. Barbara Ehrenreich in her essay from Nickel and Dimed, and Robert Reich "Why the Poor are Getting Poorer, and the Rich Richer," would likewise caution that work alone is not uplifting, and work must be fairly paid and above all respected by society to satisfy the heart and soul of the worker.
             It is Ehrenreich's point of view that offers perhaps the most comprehensive, and the most satisfying portrait of work on a human as well as on a sociological level. Ehrenreich discusses the difficulty of living as a lower-income worker in America today. Quite often, waitresses, maids, and other people whose manual labor makes modern life possible and easy are simply ignored because people who work at more esteemed occupations assume they are better people because of what they do for a living. Because society does not value lower-paid, manual occupations, and by extension the people who work in these occupations, such often have no benefits, low pay, and are seen almost as a fitting and just punishment upon the workers for not being able to move into the ranks of the middle class. However, working wit...