30 Days

Last night I watched the premiere of 30 Days, a TV series by Morgan Spurlock from the famous (or is that infamous?!) documentary Super Size Me. The concept of the show is very similar to Super Size Me - the results of 30 day lifestyle experiment are recorded (and accompanied by a social commentary).

In the first episode, he took his fiancée to Columbus, Ohio and they lived on minimum wage for a month. With the underlying point of the show being that a minimum wage job ($5.15 / hour) is inadequate to support someone, yet alone a family. They actually found jobs that paid slightly more than minimum wage (~$7/h), but had a quite depressing life. Despite living in an ant-infested former crack house (apartment), they ended up earning less than they spent in the month. (Mostly because of ~$1000 in hospital bills - it's kind of hard to pay that off when you only make ~$44/day after taxes)...it makes me grateful to have grown up like I did and to have a decent job.

I think in future episodes other people will be the guinea pigs and Spurlock will just narrate.