Watched "30 Days" pilot about living on minimum wage yesterday. Wow.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

What a scary eyeopener.

For those who haven't seen it... roughly goes like this. Morgan Spurlock ("Supersize Me" filmmaker who makes this show) and his fiancee live on min. wage for a month.

They start out with $206.00 and no car or place to live.

They each worked minimum wage jobs the whole time. In the first days they found an apartment for about 325/mo (Columbus OH) with no furniture and essentially nonfunctional heat in a crappy neighborhood, with a landlord willing to let them pay their security deposit in installments.

Morgan worked homebuilding and landscaping jobs, some pizza making etc., finacee worked food service, dishwashing, bussing. They managed to find some free furniture after a few days from some church run charity. They took the bus or walked everywhere except when emergency dictated a cab ride.

It painstakingly detailed every cent they made and spent, starting out a few hundred in the red (security deposit plus 1 mo rent). They range from a few hundred in the red to a couple hundred in the black, but have no health benefits. Their only extravagance was a movies trip with Morgan's nephews on Easter and a 20 dollar dinner on the fiancee's birthday. Decisions on whether to spend any money on a drink at the movies were life and death budget breakers.

They actually were finishing slightly ahead with Morgan working 2 jobs most of the time, but 2 E.R. visits (1200 total for small stuff, occupational wrist injury for him, bladder infection for her) completely wiped them out and would have had them in debt for months.

Very humbling and scary.

[riderinthestorm]

1. There's a thread in GD about US attitudes toward poverty

And THAT'S an eye-opener....

It will be interesting to see if Spurlock can change peoples' perspective on what it's like to really be poor in America.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Seeing the day to day budget issues makes it concrete in a way that

is impossible to appreciate otherwise. And to see how there is no money for any kind of extravagance, not to mention healthy groceries.

And no margin for any kind of emergency that incurs medical bills (which are often higher for the uninsured) and takes one out of commission for work.

[bertha katzenengel]

3. If you want to get an even better perspective, read

Nickel and Dimed - On Not Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich. Shocking and humbling. Also humiliating, to an extent, knowing that, along with the homeless, there are so many people in this country just above homeless status who are working their butts off to try to stay afloat.

This country is so fucked up in so many ways.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

7. that read should be essential for the DU'er. good call.

[NMMNG]

11. You beat me to it

That's exactly what I was going to recommend. It's an excellent and eye-opening read. It should be mandatory reading for anybody who claims minimum wage (or anything near it) is enough to live on.

Read about it

[Momgonepostal]

12. Fantastic book, I agree

It really busted the myth that the poor are poor because they are lazy. She worked her tail off and did not get ahead at all. I think everyone should read that book.

[XemaSab]

13. I didn't like that book

I thought the amount of time she spent in each job was too short to get a real perspective.

Of course you will be broke when you are just starting out at a new job, or you are just moving.

I moved 4 months ago to a different part of the state and started a WELL paying job, and I am still financially a bit off balance. Anyone would be.

I thought it would have been a much better book if she had spent 6 months in each place, at each job.

[Richard Steele]

14. There are alot of people with jobs who have no homes.

I saw a few when I worked Day-Labor; some of the reliable
regulars were staying at the local homeless shelter. Another
was living in his car, and at least one was sleeping in a dumpster
to save the 7 bucks the shelter charged.

[sir_captain]

4. The episode last week

where he spent a month in jail, was pretty intense too--pretty good demonstration of how inhumane and ineffective our penal system is (which is not to say that any other country has particularly gotten it right.)

[lavenderdiva]

5. what channel is this being shown on?

I am assuming this is on TV? I'd like to see it...

[sir_captain]

6. FX

wednesday night

[lavenderdiva]

9. thanks, I will look for it this Wednesday!

:hi:

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

17. If it's the one I'm thinking of (hard drinking college girl and her mom),

it's not a particularly good one, so if it's that one, don't judge the whole series by it.

[tyedyeto]

8. I have not seen this show but.......

I am living on 'not much more than minimum'.

If I didn't have a s/o to pay the mortgage, just the utilities alone has me in a no win situation. Yes. my s/o pays the 'rent' but I pay everything else and those costs are rising every day.

Think: Arizona in the summertime...A/C cost skyrockets.

[dorktv]

10. I am lucky, my roommate is psycho about having a effecient house

with regards to cooling...so we only pay $100 or so...but no heat in winter. BRR!

[Broken_Hero]

15. Thanks for sharing this

I had no idea there was a documentary on this subject floating out there. I have seen numerous events taking this issue to task on various shows, aka cspan primarily, but I never see any concrete studies, like this one for example.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

16. It's not really a documentary. 30 Days puts people into scenarios that

are contrived, usually to illustrate some point or put the protagonist (in this case the show's creator) into a situation that hopefully will elicit empathy from themselves and the audience about something they are not familiar with.

You could say it's a reality show but the intent is generally not to exploit for sensationalistic purposes.

"Supersize Me" the film that Spurlock got famous with is such a scenario, where he uses a stunt (eating only at McDonald's for a month) as a jumping off point to explore the issue of obesity in America.

[billyskank]

18. In the UK Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee did the same sort of thing

and wrote a book about it. She tried living as poor people do, only working the jobs that people with no connections or qualifications can get and living on those means. Like him, I think she only did it for a month (who'd want to do it for longer, I guess, if they don't have to).

[lildreamer316]

19. I can't believe this is actually suprising to many people.

I lived like this for years. So did my ex, and my current. I remember being pregnant and having to pawn what little gold could part with for $20 to eat on. I remember when the electricity got shut off when I was 8 monts pregnant and had to reduce myself to calling a customer and begging to borrow the $300 to get it turned back on.
Humiliating.
Yes, I was on Medicaid. No, they would not help me get help for the electric, because hubby made just enough for us to get food but for some reason had a hell of a time qualifying for anything else. I was also too proud to push the issue.
I will never forget living that way.
Some days even now we are scrounging for change to make food money--but not nearly as often as we used to. And I don't have to pay rent now either.
Does that tell you how bad it has been?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

20. It's not so much "surprising" as it is emotionally affecting to see the

day to day reality of this, even in such a contrived scenario (i.e. Morgan and his fiancee will go back to comfortable lives in Manhattan at the end of the month). Even with two young healthy people without kids.

For those of us (like me) who have not had to really scrap just to make rent, it makes you feel a sort of uncomfortable tension in the pit of your stomach, thinking about being a few sick days from bankruptcy and possible homelessness at any time.

[underpants]

21. Haven't seen that one but I did catch the Prison one on TiVo last night

I didn't know that prisoners in that jail (I live in that county) just sit there all day and do nothing. Likewise I had no idea that they didn't assign rooms to them, they just count the number of people in the "Day room" I guess. Sheesh that actuallly looked worse than the Army and that's saying something.

[dropkickpa]

22. That is how I lived for quite a while

And now, though I make a bit more (about $12/hr) and actually have health insurance, I literally have an account balance of less than $3.00 for about 25 days of each month (I only get paid monthly).

Being this poor is very scary. I can go out to eat once a month (I build this into my budget, it's something special me and Dropkid get to do together and I am not willing to sacrifice it).

I do have a few luxuries, like home phone, cable, and internet. Internet is necessary for work, home phone because my cell (my parents put me on their family plan so I could be reachable) doesn't work in the house and I have a kid (otherwise wouldn't have that or the health ins.) and, funnily enough, the cost for internet and phone works out to about the same as when I add cable due to a special the cable company was running. For the past 3 months, I have to rotate each month which bill I'm going to skip paying because everything else is inching up incrementally and my salary is no longer enough to cover it. I do not own a credit card or car (get bus pass free through work). I consolidated my student loans and the payment is a bit lower each month. I qualify for NO assistance (foodstamps, heating help, etc) because I make $158 too much a month.

I will be looking for a 2nd job, even though that means even less time I get to spend with Dropkid (I already work about 45 hrs a week). I won't be able to make my heating bills this winter if I don't.

For about five years (18-23), I only went to the doctor (Planned Parenthood) to get my yearly and BC pills. I am now paying for that because of an injury to my knee during that time that I couldn't afford to get treated. The damage done is irreversable and is getting steadily worse. At least now I can go to the doctor when it gets bad of I do something to make it worse.

The scary thing? My situation is a LOT more common than many people think. I know MORE people in the same boat as me than not.

Thanks Dubya! Things are just going great for me (and millions more like me)! Gotta love this economy!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

23. In the show, he worked mostly out of a temp agency. One of the older

temps he was riding to work with had worked with a big company (I want to say Delco but I can't remember) for 25 years, and made less money than he'd started at 25 years earlier (over 7 dollars and hour at that time), and with no benefits.

[dropkickpa]

24. I work for a university that has over

10,000 employees, the 5th largest employer in my county, but my salary increases do not even keep pace with inflation, so I am technically earning less year by year.