Template for Writing a Rhetorical Analysis of "When all else fails, rob the poor"

Barbara Ehrenreich starts her essay by discussing how the lower class in america is being charged a heaping amount of money compared to the middle and upper class through the private sector as well as the government itself. The problem she identifies are that banks get to charge insane interest rates on people with bad credit from low incomes because they need to make money off of the loan itself through interest. She also talks about how local governments increase the fees of being pulled over for suspended licenses and increasing bond amounts for being a resident of a prison cell. Even more examples include "failing to pay minimum wage and refusing to honor overtime pay differentials." to people with low incomes. Her purpose it to inform the public about how lower class income individuals are being treated by the government and are being targeted with some laws. In order to accomplish this purpose, she appeals mainly to the lower class telling them that both the private sector and the government are treating them unfairly. In her essay, Ehrenreich addresses the main argument against her thesis, the idea that the government is treating all classes of income the same. She refutes this by pulling up multiple state laws where citizens drivers licenses have been pulled for owing child support, yet they can't get work to make this up because they can't drive. Finally, she concludes by making the point that the government could create policies that protect against the "predation of the poor" such as no one should be incarcerated for debt. Overall, the argument Ehrenreich makes is effective because she has warned the general population of the unfairness towards the lower class and tells ways that the people can fix this if we work to reform some of the laws in our local and state governments.