With the Austin City Council considering an electric rate increase that, as it is currently structured, would greatly impact low income wage earners, perhaps it would help if if we could see what it would be like to walk in a poor person’s shoes. Most Americans know the facts about low-wage work, but many have been lucky enough to avoid actually having to live on $8 or $9 an hour. A computer game called Spent gives you the opportunity to see what it would be like.
The game, by an advertising firm called McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham, N.C., starts with a choice: Would you like to be a server, a warehouse worker or a temp?
From there, the choices get more difficult.
- Should you pay to get your pet medical care, or let the animal suffer?
- Should you go to the dentist or suffer yourself and save some bucks?
- Should you let your child and a friend get ice cream, or do you need that $5 for bills?
The game is interspersed with facts about the choices people with very little money are making every day, and the consequences of those choices.
Want to see how well you could manage your money on a very low wage? And when you are done, add $20 to $30 on for a utility service fee increase. Play it yourself.
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Nice little game, I make a lot of these decisions everyday (and I’m Ivy league educated)
That’s hilarious-obviously a “non poor” person created the game-who the heck has these choices when you are poor? Should I go to the dentist-hel-lo-that is a luxury for the “non poor”. There is no choice. Can you live without paying rent, food, and utilities? No! This is all a low income person can afford. There are no other “extras”. They are talking about a “non low income person” all of the sudden having to do without. They would then have to make the choice of what to cut out of their normal expenses. A person with low income never has to make these choices-duh!
Yes, but I believe that this game was created to give the “non-poor” a sense of what it would be like if they did have to make financial decisions as a low-income wage earner.
While the “luxuries” are not regular choices the working poor have to make, a suddenly poor person would have to come to terms with the fact that what they previously may have considered non-issues financially, could be the difference between eating and not eating, having electricity and water or not or facing eviction.
Sadly, in this economy, many are having to face making financial decisions of this sort for the first time in their lives.
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I have two jobs and make minimum wage ($8.60 buckaroos an hour). Then again, I am a young (25), non-married (live-in girlfriend), no kids (thank god), and in excellent health, so my minimum wage isn’t such a horrible thing. But even I get very close to nada in between paychecks. The game is a little harsh. You start out as a single parent. Wow. And you are down to your last thou.
and the uniform is like $40. really? ever heard of Ross