Aliyah Abdulmalek

9/20/2017

English 101

Prof. John

Rhetorical Analysis of It Is Expensive to Be Poor

In the editorial It Is Expensive To Be Poor, published on The Atlantic in 2014, the author

Barbara Ehrenreich takes a look at causes of falling into poverty and argues that because lack of

current law addressing poverty and the notion that people are poor solely because of themselves,

it has gotten worst over the years. The author uses a variety of methods to persuade her audience

into argument such as logos and ethos.

In this article Ehrenreich spends the first several paragraphs discussing the legislation

President Lyndon B. Johnson passed while in office, admitting that although it was underfunded

its action was beneficial as it established major programs such as Head Start, Medicaid, and Job

Corps (Ehrenreich, 3). She agrees with the approach that Johnson took in putting the

responsibility of poverty on the government. Ehrenreich further goes to show the shift in

ideologies of poverty under different Presidents, claiming that with Regan the idea that poor

people were poor because of themselves. This, she argues, played a major role as it allowed for

politicians to blame the poverty on the poor rather than take action. *

Ehrenreich relies heavily on appealing to logos as she looks back at the U.S. legislations

passed on poverty. The logical structure of Ehrenreich argument is key as a