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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Interesting show, just got around to watching it on tivo. This episode doesnt appear to be running again any time soon.
The guy that did 'supersize me' does 30 days in different guises...in some future episodes disguised as a muslim living in america, for example.
In this one, he and his fiancee take on the minimum wage. Equipped only with what appears to be a few suitcases of landsend clothes and a $500 set of pots and pans, they throw one weeks worth of minimum wage cash in their pockets and hit the streets.
Day 1 they find an apartment in the seedy part of town, complete with bugs and a recently vacated crackhouse apartment downstairs. No heat. After sleeping on the floor in their winter landsend duds they get a local church to donate them a full set of furniture.
Day 2 they both get jobs...he finds work at a temp agency doing drywall sanding and scraping up old turf from someone lawn...both paying $7 an hour, so he's up and over minimum wage. He explains the agony of wanting to just buy food when he's hungry but knowing he cant afford it. Stuffs himself on free pickles at a deli while applying for a job. She applies to every place with a help wanted sign but only gets an offer from a coffee shop bussing tables and hand washing dishes.
I'm going to say up front that both of them obviously have never experienced poverty or done a hard days work, and neither of them, right to the end, really and truly 'get it', although they do a nice liberals job of bemoaning the fate of the people forced to live at the minimum wage level.
They're both bringing home ~40-45 a day, but thats getting wiped out in advance as the apartment owner wants a months deposit, the electric company wants a $110 deposit in advance before they'll turn on the power, and they need other one-time items, like blankets, sheets and so forth...purchased at the salvation army at least.
After a couple of days, Morgan has 'something wrong with his wrist' that he thinks he needs to see a doctor over. I suspect whats wrong is something called 'manual labor'. His fiancee comes down with a bladder infection. They go to the free clinic to find they're #35 in line and nobody over #20 will be seen. #5 was in line behind the other 4 people at 2am.
So of course both of them go to the emergency room and run up $1200 in bills, which they receive near the end of the 30 days just when they're getting ahead, and this sets them back below zero. Morgan notes the $40 itemized charge for the ace bandage they gave him for what appears to have been no more than a sprain, before declaring that healthcare in america is out of control.
Thats probably because poor people with a bladder infection drink cranberry juice and take aspirin, and wrap their own sprains with their own store bought ace bandages, or go to a doctors office for an outpatient visit and a prescription for 1/10th the cost of the emergency room.
During the course of their penniless adventure, I see Morgans fiancee cutting the stalks from broccolli and throwing them away, and buying bottled water in bulk during their grocery shopping and at a store ($2.50 at the store). Poor people drink water out of the tap and eat ALL of the broccolli.
The evidence of stress that finances place on a couple also rears its head near the end. He's been using a bus pass to get to work but she walks six blocks and she lets him hear all about that right after buying her $2.50 bottle of water. The trigger was his purchase of $1.20 of donuts for his two visiting relatives kids they employed to simulate how much worse it is supporting kids on minimum wage.
He editorializes several problems with the working poor, from crime ridden, dirty neighborhoods to being penalized through utilities requiring advance deposits through the costs of healthcare.
Besides the culture shock, it was very obvious that Morgan and fiancee didnt have any experience or knowledge on the art of being poor. My wife and I, both having experience with thin times in our teens and twenties, were clucking our tongues regularly at the excesses and omissions.
A good show and a real eye opener for people who have never lived the low life. Probably would have been better if they documented the life of a couple who actually are poor and how they cope with a lot of the challenges.
What he did show is that a couple, even one inexperienced with living hand to mouth, can get by on two minimum wage jobs as long as they stay out of the emergency room.
Ironically, their combined take home was roughly our almost mythical $25,000 a year budget, although their setup didnt come with a prepaid mortgage and all the other stuff already prepaid as well.
The guy that did 'supersize me' does 30 days in different guises...in some future episodes disguised as a muslim living in america, for example.
In this one, he and his fiancee take on the minimum wage. Equipped only with what appears to be a few suitcases of landsend clothes and a $500 set of pots and pans, they throw one weeks worth of minimum wage cash in their pockets and hit the streets.
Day 1 they find an apartment in the seedy part of town, complete with bugs and a recently vacated crackhouse apartment downstairs. No heat. After sleeping on the floor in their winter landsend duds they get a local church to donate them a full set of furniture.
Day 2 they both get jobs...he finds work at a temp agency doing drywall sanding and scraping up old turf from someone lawn...both paying $7 an hour, so he's up and over minimum wage. He explains the agony of wanting to just buy food when he's hungry but knowing he cant afford it. Stuffs himself on free pickles at a deli while applying for a job. She applies to every place with a help wanted sign but only gets an offer from a coffee shop bussing tables and hand washing dishes.
I'm going to say up front that both of them obviously have never experienced poverty or done a hard days work, and neither of them, right to the end, really and truly 'get it', although they do a nice liberals job of bemoaning the fate of the people forced to live at the minimum wage level.
They're both bringing home ~40-45 a day, but thats getting wiped out in advance as the apartment owner wants a months deposit, the electric company wants a $110 deposit in advance before they'll turn on the power, and they need other one-time items, like blankets, sheets and so forth...purchased at the salvation army at least.
After a couple of days, Morgan has 'something wrong with his wrist' that he thinks he needs to see a doctor over. I suspect whats wrong is something called 'manual labor'. His fiancee comes down with a bladder infection. They go to the free clinic to find they're #35 in line and nobody over #20 will be seen. #5 was in line behind the other 4 people at 2am.
So of course both of them go to the emergency room and run up $1200 in bills, which they receive near the end of the 30 days just when they're getting ahead, and this sets them back below zero. Morgan notes the $40 itemized charge for the ace bandage they gave him for what appears to have been no more than a sprain, before declaring that healthcare in america is out of control.
Thats probably because poor people with a bladder infection drink cranberry juice and take aspirin, and wrap their own sprains with their own store bought ace bandages, or go to a doctors office for an outpatient visit and a prescription for 1/10th the cost of the emergency room.
During the course of their penniless adventure, I see Morgans fiancee cutting the stalks from broccolli and throwing them away, and buying bottled water in bulk during their grocery shopping and at a store ($2.50 at the store). Poor people drink water out of the tap and eat ALL of the broccolli.
The evidence of stress that finances place on a couple also rears its head near the end. He's been using a bus pass to get to work but she walks six blocks and she lets him hear all about that right after buying her $2.50 bottle of water. The trigger was his purchase of $1.20 of donuts for his two visiting relatives kids they employed to simulate how much worse it is supporting kids on minimum wage.
He editorializes several problems with the working poor, from crime ridden, dirty neighborhoods to being penalized through utilities requiring advance deposits through the costs of healthcare.
Besides the culture shock, it was very obvious that Morgan and fiancee didnt have any experience or knowledge on the art of being poor. My wife and I, both having experience with thin times in our teens and twenties, were clucking our tongues regularly at the excesses and omissions.
A good show and a real eye opener for people who have never lived the low life. Probably would have been better if they documented the life of a couple who actually are poor and how they cope with a lot of the challenges.
What he did show is that a couple, even one inexperienced with living hand to mouth, can get by on two minimum wage jobs as long as they stay out of the emergency room.
Ironically, their combined take home was roughly our almost mythical $25,000 a year budget, although their setup didnt come with a prepaid mortgage and all the other stuff already prepaid as well.
![:-\](https://www.early-retirement.org/sk/forums/images/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
