Reality of "Roger and Me" Vs. "Ragged Dick"

The reality of the documentary shows how hard life is in poor communities. In Flint, there are layoffs and shutdowns of businesses. This makes people move, lose their homes, and go into debt. This turns Flint into a ghost town. Financial security and job pressure causes suicide, alcoholism, abuse, and violence rates to increase.

In addition, the people of Flint job situations are not fair and are inequity. The big businesses (in this case General Motors) sales and profits are increasing, yet the employees are getting laid off. Instead of using the money for their employees, they use it to buy other companies. The big businesses are transferring their operations to countries where labor is cheaper. The companies do not feel compelled to give opportunities to their American employees. If it costs less to use Mexican labor, for example, then they will outsource jobs there. The laid off employees are told that fast food places are their “dream jobs”. They are also given menial jobs to work in jails. Some of the other poor people have to resort to selling or killing rabbits for money. They have no opportunity to succeed and big business feels no obligation to help them.

For the most part, Ragged Dick’s situation is different. Just like the people in Flint, he has trouble getting a job and wants to be successful. Unlike the people in Flint, he gets the opportunity to be successful. He saves a business man’s son from drowning and is offered a high paying job. He is given the opportunity to succeed and be promoted within the company. He believes everyone in America has the opportunity to succeed and that hard work makes it possible.

I think the Flint situation is more realistic. In today’s world, if a boy would save a man’s son from drowning, the man would probably thank him but would not offer him a permanent high paying job. The man would probably just give the boy a reward or have him over for dinner. In contrast, Flint shows the bleak reality for the poor. They are working hard, but they cannot succeed as the companies do not truly care about their employees. The companies are making it difficult to succeed because they either pay them little or they lay off their employers to cut costs. The employees are not able to make it out of poverty. Big business is not fair as the only concern is to increase sales and profit at the expense of its workers. Thus “Roger and Me” is the opposite to Horatio Alger’s myth of the “American Dream”. America is not the land of equal opportunity where hard work allows success.