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His TV show had the absolute worst argument in favor of raising minimum wage that I have ever seen, which really pissed me off because he could have made a legitimate argument. But no, he challenged he and his girlfriend to live on the equivalent of minimum wage at the time for 30 days. His girlfriend insisted they continue their organic vegan lifestyle, so they blew through their food budget, and then one of them got a not especially serious cold and they went to the ER over it.
If you're going to live like you're on minimum wage, show how hard it is just to survive on that. Don't do that first world middle class problems bullshit.
By blowing through the budget they showed that choosing to eat healthy food is not an option on minimum wage. Surviving is too low a bar to get the point across.
If you're trying to show that to a general audience, don't insist you eat a diet that most of them wouldn't eat whether or not it was affordable. All it makes you look like is someone who grew up in privilege and doesn't understand poverty or the need to make sacrifices because of it.
First, I'll agree it wasn't a completely objective approach to trying to live on minimum wage.
I think that was also part of the point. He was reflecting much of his audience showing just how incompatible a privileged lifestyle is with the majority of the working poor. His conclusion wasn't "this is the way to do this" but instead "Look how bad I screwed this up trying to live even partially like I normally did".
It was an imperfect episode, but is one of the few videoed storytelling of someone with means trying to experience a lower standard of living than they are used to. To-date its the only one I can think of that showed some of the in-the-trenches difficulty of trying to find housing, a job, transportation to the job, food budgeting, and uninsured healthcare interactions and costs. For a 45 minute runtime with explanation of the premise to conclusion, it had some value.
I just don't agree. I think people looked at that and said that it proved that it's easy to live on minimum wage as long as you don't insist on eating things like organic food.
What it needed to prove is that it isn't possible to live on minimum wage.
i think this is more of a cope than anything, even if you presented these people with a fair and balanced take they would just start making shit up anyway "oh they probably do drugs" "oh they probably buy designer clothes" "oh they probably have a nicer car" etc. etc. etc.
They (he and his wife) were barely scraping by before the organic food thing, which was one single purchase. If anyone came away thinking it was just that one purchase that sent them off the rails then I'm not sure they'd be convinced anyway about the difficulties and dangers of minimum wage income to support oneself.
I believe we agree already its not possible to live on minimum wage. I'm not sure its fair to lay the blame of this not being fully acknowledge in society at the feet of a 45 minute reality TV show.
but you could also flip this on its head, start eating dumpster food, and saving as much money as possible, living as frugally as possible, only to demonstrate that actually "minimum wage isn't that bad" which would further worsen the issue, so, i guess a balance here is needed.
Organic is always more expensive, but vegan can be done dirt cheap
Agreed, but she insisted on organic.
His show had an episode with a mom trying to drink like her college daughter. The mom starts going out most nights, eating like shit and feeling bad during the day. The part that has stayed with me for almost 20 years is how the mom was definitely having a good time towards the middle of the month. When I first saw it I was a little younger than the daughter and now I am a little younger than the mom was at filming. When I question if I should start drinking more again, I think of that lady and say "Maybe."
FWIW "Nickle and Dimed" was far better then Spurlock's schlock.
i mean even then, i think it's still fair. It shows problems of the more privileged sure, but if the more privileged people are skill issued this hard, imagine what poor people are dealing with.