30 Days -- Minimum Wage
Econopundit
This show is apparently being broadcast once again on FX tonight at 11:05 central. I've TIVO'd as much as I had time for, and on the basis of what I've seen I'd recommend it.
What's up on the screen is a simple, hard truth: it is possible for two healthy young Americans (a) to virtually immediately find living quarters and work in an unfamiliar city (b) at or around minimum wage, and (c) to live on same with certain hardships for 30 days thereafter.
Spurlock (Super Size Me) and his producers designed the show as propaganda for minimum wage hikes, socialized child care, and expanded social insurance. The realities of the situation dilute the purity of the intended message in interesting ways.
First and foremost all those minimum wage jobs are scarcer than the producers apparently thought. All the easily-found jobs pay more than minimum wage. Spurlock signs on with a temp agency at $7/hr; his companion Jamieson dickers her wage down to minimum so as to not cheat the show's premise. (Spurlock quits when he finds deductions bring his take home down to a measly $4.26. This is important. We return to the puzzle of his deductions shortly.)
Second, the artifice of moving the action to Columbus Ohio -- a city with which the Spurlock and Jamieson aren't familiar -- seems to mask a certain level of dishonesty. The purpose of the move, says the show's script, is frankly political. Ohio's voting patterns shifted the presidential election to Bush, and Ohio remains a swing state. How bad things are for the working poor in Ohio may, presumably, decide the next election. But this simplistic political background serves to misdirect the viewer's attention. In real life arrival at a new city and finding a minimum wage job is unusual, typically a one-time event. This artificial situation all-too-conveniently gives the filmmakers plausible deniability of certain facts on the ground. Were their accidental discoveries (in fairly short order) of local charity-based food, furniture, and medical providers possibilities they anticipated but hoped they might avoid?
Yet more-serious questions arise in connection with the all important medical issues. Jamieson wakes up with urinary tract pain and announces she has a bladder infection. After some time and difficulty she obtains and fills a $26 prescription. Real world people, when they wake up and find it hurts when they pee, worry like crazy they've got a serious illness. They don't simply announce to the world they have a bladder infection unless they've had it before -- unless the condition is chronic, in other words. Did Jamieson initiate filming knowing a chronic infection would worsten at one point or another during the shoot?
And there are of course Spurlock's varying medical issues. Many temp agencies provide health insurance -- with, normally, some degree of worker participation and payroll deduction. Spurlock's 39% temp agency payroll deduction can't have been just basic social security, medicare, and so on. Was he getting health benefits with the temp agency job? Did he dump his $7/hr job because he knew the benefits would interfere with the predetermined story of health care and the working poor?
For whatever reason he moves "up" the ladder and easily finds higher-paying work landscaping. And then his wrist immediately starts hurting, allowing the script to once again show the horrors of the American health care system as seen by the working poor.
But two important words are left out: "worker's compensation." The first thing you're asked in any emergency room is whether the injury is work-related. (I know not only because I'm an educated economist but also because I've been there myself a few times.)
One can only conclude it interfered with the script's political message so it was omitted, but the simple fact is even in his second, no-benefits job, Spurlock's wrist injury was fully covered by his employer's worker's compensation policy.
So what can we say about the documentary? You should watch it. You may find it enjoyable despite its flaws.
For my part, I was distracted by Roger Ebert's basic dictum that if it makes you feel the real events upon which it is based would have been more interesting, a movie can only be judged a failure.
For all the nobility of their message Spurlock and Jamieson seem to learn nothing new about minimum wage Columbus Ohio. It is far from unusual for real-world low wage earners to speculate on the worth of what they do. You don't have to be a Ph.D -- or a New York TV personality -- to wonder whether you're making a difference, much less whether your paycheck measures that difference. But for our filmmaking adventurers Spurlock and Jamieson the whole daytime world of work exists only so they can mug at the videocam as they show off the paltry sums on their paychecks. What did they actually do during the work hours? For whom? And really -- is it certain it was worth more than they were paid?
UPDATE: Reviews can be found here and here and here and here.
As I look these reviews over I wonder whether the entire US literary class is so out of touch with normal life that EconoPundit is the only one to notice the relevance of worker's compensation? Do the people who composed these reviews even know worker's compensation exists?"
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