Flash Game Simulates Living on $9/hr.

I find that I live a much more active life in this game than I ever have in real life. Back when I was making $9/hr, I can't remember a single week where my dog died, I got injured at work, the neighbor kid broke my window, I decided to see a therapist and one of my co-workers came down with a terminal condition.<p>I only made it to day 13, but already I've spent more in that game than I did in real life over the last month. I realize it's trying to make a point, but all it's really doing is making me suspect that it's fibbing a bit. More realism might turn out to be more convincing.

What a joke. In the month, I got sick twice, had two 'best friends' get married, had a grandfather die, needed a root canal, wrecked my car (even though I chose to pay the max rent and live 5 miles from work, it told me I still <i>had</i> to to have a car), had my sink break (and the landlord refuse to fix it), got caught hiding pets in my apartment (why do I have a pet? I can't afford a pet, that is just a bad decision.).<p>I get it, they are trying to make a point. However, the point they are making is crap. It is very hard to live on $9 an hour. However, making $9 puts you in the top 1% of all humans who have ever lived. There are lots of social programs that will help a little. They don't make you rich, but they help a little.<p>The first thing I ask anyone who complains about being unemployed or underemployed: "Do you have a TV? Do you have cable or satellite tv?" You wouldn't believe how hostile people are when you suggest that they might benefit from turning off their tv and using that time to study or learn a new skill. As a child my family was on food stamps and welfare. My mother raised 4 boys on her own. As it turns out, I am now in the top 1% of wage earners in the US, but <i>I</i> don't have time to watch TV. I have never taken a real vacation. I suffered through 6 years of Army Reserve so I could pay for college. Every free minute I have is spent working, hustling, studying, experimenting.<p>I don't believe the hype. If you are willing to work your ass off, if you show up to work on time and aren't high or drunk, and you don't steal, it is very easy to get a job, today. It's easy to get 2 jobs. Working 80 hours per week isn't something that you want to do, but it's a walk in the park compared to the conditions our ancestors lived in.<p>It's really hard to take care of kids when you are a single parent and you can't get childcare, especially if you don't have family that is willing to help. Maybe we should do more for people in this situation, not to help them, but to at least give the kids the opportunity to do better. For everyone else, I say stop whining, throw away your tv, and stop being so entitled and lazy.

I like the concept a lot but the game is just too rigid to be realistic. It's essentially a propaganda piece and the choices it gives you are no-win by design (so that the game has opportunity to lecture you on the plight of low-wage workers). Real life is not so restrictive.<p>It seems a bit involved to get across what could have been an infographic.<p>I'd really like to see someone take a more serious and/or interesting approach to this concept. This game plays like an old "choose your own adventure"; you have "choices", but everything is pre-determined and there are only a handful of available story routes, which in this case are designed to make it difficult to complete the game while selecting any of the presented moral options and then to show that you'll only have a few dollars left in exchange for abandonment of all principles.

There are three things I find annoying by this game.<p>I shouldn't be driving a car if I don't have money for it. I should sell the car and always take bus, since later in the game it says I have that option.<p>I had to choose if I should stay with an hourly paycheck or work by the piece. I choose piece because then I thought I could put in some more work, but then it just said I couldn't work that much. Well if I had known that I would have stuck with an hourly check, that's math you can actually work out in real life before making that decision.<p>It says I have a college degree but that wont help me, and then it says I'm probably too uneducated to help out my children with math homework.<p>All in all some interesting facts about the american low-income society, but the choices and different aspects of it are very strange. You could do a lot more to save money as well as make more money than is presented here. Well basically, kind of annoyingly simplified.

My major reactions while playing the game tended to follow a theme:<p><pre><code> Game: Mobile phone bill's due. Me: I have a mobile phone?? Game: Landlord wants pet rent for the dog. Me: I have a dog?? Game: Car payment's due. Me: I have a CAR??? Game: How about some $60 internet? Me: How about the $20 non-broadband type? Game: You lost your car, so you lost your job. Me: No, see, that's why I paid extra to live close. We call them bikes.</code></pre>

This would be a lot better if it were more realistic, it banks on you not being able to make smart decisions to ram the various factoids down your throat. It would be a much better experience if the basics were spread out over multiple months with the occasional clustering of events.<p>This 'perfect storm' of trouble is just setting you up for failure, the deck is stacked against you much further than it is in real life. You are also not given the full picture up front, nor are you given the option on which services you subscribe to.<p>Also, if you can't afford a mobile phone you probably shouldn't have one, and if your landlord does something illegal an alternative option is to tell him to go f*ck off rather than to pay or move out. Good luck evicting me if I'm up to date on payments and the contract stipulates terms that I've lived up to.<p>That said, it's probably a useful tool to get people to put themselves in the shoes of someone that has it worse than they themselves do.

I played the game, and came out $199 ahead...and that when faced with absurdly limited options (say, the rowdy roommate would see a Mosin/Nagant ($29!) instead of the landlord when told to leave, so no extra $100 cost there). No risky sacrifices (medical bills paid, job attended to), no luxuries until affordable (and sentimentality is a luxury).<p>I should have taken copious notes (maybe I will on another pass) and comment how, instead of viewing it all as crushing poverty, it is indicative of living in a luxurious society. Opt for the $1 hamburger, and be told "that's why so many poor are overweight"? WTH? If it's got that many calories then cut it in half and eat it across two meals! If you're obese, you're not poor; talk to the half of the world's population which lives on less than $2/day.<p>So, coming out a couple hundred dollars ahead, I could run this "poverty" scenario for 4 months and have enough to buy a refurbished MacBook Air and join the Apple Developer's Program, with which I could bootstrap an iOS App-writing business. Seems some others played, came out over $1000 ahead, and could jump in to app-writing in one month flat.<p>Read between the lines in the game, and see the opportunities that abound. Sell the car and take the bus. Focus the kids on learning entrepreneuring instead of sports. Take in a decent paying roommate (and throw out the rowdy one bodily if need be). Use the library for education and internet businesses. Eat the $1 hamburgers featuring caloric abundance. Heck, save the $1 and make two 1.5lb loaves of great bread (coming to my blog soon!). Organize with other "poor" to leverage opportunities (carpooling, babysitting, etc.).<p>First-world problems indeed.<p>ETA: Downvoters, take a stand and tell me why this post is wrong.

Well, there's already a lot of comments here pointing out that he game is unrealistic and rigged. But I'd like to add to this a bit, and to say that the memes which the game is rigged to spread are not only wrong but pernicious.<p>There are two views of poverty in rich countries. One view holds that poverty is caused by poor people who make bad decisions, and that it's possible to lift yourself out of poverty by making good decisions instead. The second view holds that poverty is caused by external factors, that it's a trap that poor people can't escape, and that the way to solve poverty is by giving ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer-funded free stuff to the poor until they stop being poor. The cartoon versions of each of these extremes are silly, and there's a bit of truth in both of them.<p>The real trick, though, is that the first belief, the belief that poor people can pull themselves out of poverty, is true only to the extent that they actually believe it. A poor person who believes he can get out of poverty by making sensible decisions will make those decisions. A poor person who believes his poverty is the fault of, and can only be solved by, other people will not. Convincing a poor person that someone else is responsible for their situation is just about the worst thing you can possibly do for them.<p>Those who want to support increased welfare are openly hostile to the idea that poor people can take responsibility for their own decisions and start making better ones to solve their problems. And this, I think, is a huge factor in perpetuating poverty.<p>I want to help the poor, really I do, but I'm certain that teaching them the correct <i>values</i> is far more important than handing them cash.

Great. Playful (asking you to solve a "train a travels at 70mph..." question when you say you can help your kids with their homework) and creatively designed (cute distance-from-work slider for picking where to live). Of course it's propaganda, but regardless of the realism it does do a good job of simulating the low-income mindset, where every decision ("The ice-cream truck rolls round. Can your kid have an ice-cream?") ends up about money.

"Nickel and Dimed" was mentioned in one of the fact-bubbles. I highly recommend the book for anyone who wants to learn more about the decisions people face when in situations like this. I was spent for a time (about 10 months) being unemployed and lived on about $40 per week, skirting my rent, not having phone/internet, and getting my power cut (twice). Even though I ended up taking a job I didn't like, it payed well and I pulled myself out of that situation. Never Again.

I saw this on fark.com about a week ago, and decided not to cross post it here because it's far too biased. I understand what it's trying to do, but I don't think it's successful in doing so. My biggest complaint is that it attempts to show that it's not only about making poor choices - but the choices that the character has obviously taken prior to getting to the point where I control it were poor choices, and now I am trying to deal with it. My second complaint is that the simulation should have been one day longer - so you would have to pay rent again - that's when the real issues start happening.<p>Even with the odds against me, I was able to finish the simulation a few times with over $1200 available (thus being able to pay the rent on the following day).

This sort of sociopolitical whining is exactly why I created <a href="http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com</a> - featuring $1 meals.

Meh. I got to day 25, but there were so many dumb economic choices it forced me to make that it was essentially impossible to win the game scenario. There were a great number of future benefit choices to make, but the game forces you to think only for the moment, which is the prime reason why poor people remain poor.<p>Like, whoa! Suddenly $225 in utilities bills ($225? Seriously??? It doesn't even cost that much in Tokyo!) that I somehow didn't know about to be able to plan for.<p>And whoa! my car starts acting up, and I can't even think to park it and take the bus for awhile until I can afford to fix it (you know, rather than running it into the ground and wasting even MORE money).<p>And whoa! that leak in my sink has become a huge nightmare because I didn't handle it when it was a small issue and it was obvious the landlord wouldn't do anything about it.<p>And why the hell do I remain unemployed for so long instead of taking some part time work to keep my savings up while I look for a real job?<p>Seriously, a little planning ahead goes a LONG way.

Time for an anti-American rant. You buy premium healthcare but still need to pay the doctor ? You don't have unemployment aids ? You can get fired for <i>talking</i> to a union guy ? (if that happens to you in France, that is your way to wealth through court action)

This describes the life of around 50% (may be more) of Tunisians. The probability of bad things occurring to you is increased by the bad infrastructure, evil government, the general hardness of life and the chaos the country is living on.<p>So for me, this is completely realistic. Just drop the costs (and also the earnings) around 10 times (for poor people) to adjust for the living expenses.

This was a very interesting exercise, but some of the numbers don't seem very realistic. For example, is $600 really the cheapest rent a poor person has to pay? Even in a city like London, I've lived on $300 per month, including food, when times were tough for me.

Like many others, I also ended the game ahead at the end of the month with a fair amount to spare. It was't necessarily easy, I had to critically think about each decision. I also consider myself fairly 'financially fit' in making decisions. Many of us are problem solvers and entrepreneurs so the fact that we can 'beat' the game says nothing about the difficulty less educated have in real life.

$1500 to recover your vehicle after getting pulled over for expired registration?<p>I've gotten a half dozen tickets for expired registration in Texas and the result is you pay an extra 30 bucks when you register and a 10 dollar fee to waive the ticket if you register within 10 days of the citation. What state impounds your car?

If you want to see another take on the whole problem, go to Netflix and watch the 30 Days episode called Minimum Wage. It's the same guy who did Supersize Me. He and his girlfriend try to work and live on minimum wage for a month. Doesn't go much better for them than it does for players of this game.

This is depressing. But I'm not sure how donating $5 to some mission is going to solve these problems; the game itself says poor people are wary of accepting handouts, and that's all this will be, right?<p>I'm also not sure I'm comfortable subsidizing people's bad choices. If I have to support someone, it's my nature to micromanage their lives to make sure they are using the money efficiently. No cell phones. No Internet. No music downloads. No nights out drinking.<p>In the end, I try to imagine how I would act if I were poor, had a child, and had no marketable skills. The first thing would be to find the smallest living space available, to save on rent, heating/cooling costs, and electricity. That means sleeping on mats that come out of the closet at bedtime, washing dishes by hand, cooking everything on the stove, and taking a bath with my kid every night to save hot water. If rich people in Japan can live this way, poor people in America can live this way. I would try to live close enough to work to not need a car (cars are nice, until they break), but if that's not possible, I'd use a car for commuting and a bike for errands. I wouldn't have a cell phone or Internet access; I'd queue up my Internet needs (buying household essentials in bulk online, resyncing my CPAN mirror, whatever) and go to the library. This would also be a good time to get some public-domain music and some books to read for the week.<p>It sounds primitive but I know I could make it work. If you're dumb, lazy, and have kids, guess what, life is not going to be the same as those Hollywood stars on TV. You don't get to buy everything you want. You don't get to have fun with your friends. You get to work, cook, read, help your kids with school, and keep your bicycle in good working condition. And honestly, I don't think that's a life that's missing anything at all. You get human relationships (family), a chance to contribute to society (work), education (reading), a hobby (cooking), and exercise (cycling).<p>So I guess the problem is: how do we convince people to want what they can have, rather than to want what they can't have? It's a cultural thing, and it's going to be a very hard problem to solve. We may be able to give people free healthcare, but where will they live, what will they eat, and how will they get to work?<p>(And I know what you're all thinking: the reason I'm not poor is because I can think things through and be analytical enough to make smart choices. Yes. That's why "solving poverty" is a very, very, very difficult problem. Feeling bad and giving someone money is not the solution. Deep changes to our educational system and our cultural values are probably the only way to make things work.)

I don't want to simply reply to a comment, there's a theme flowing through this thread, that capitalism makes everyone better off in a society, that our choices lead to where we are. I think you're ignoring a fundamental truth. There aren't unlimited opportunities for every person who works hard...just opportunities for those who work harder, on the margin, than others. Capitalism isn't about working hard and getting rewards, its about being better on the margins and getting rewards.

This one hits real close to home for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Someone needs to check their numbers. A little research suggests that 275$/month health insurance premium is really high. A good emergency coverage should be closer to 50$. 60$ for internet? I get mine, high-speed, for half that. 75$ phone bill? That's the average for -smart phones-, basic services should only cost 10$.<p>And I managed to finish with 1157$ anyways. Clearly low-income people need to learn to be frugal. :)

The game is actually fairly accurate in my experience. I came out with $350 left, without starving or killing my dog, making similar choices I made when I was in similarly dire financial straits in real life. My parents kept me healthy and safe growing up, but I did have to miss out on some things that "everyone else" was doing, and I think if anything I'm better for it, especially if things get bad again.

Morgan Spurlock did an episode of his 30 Days with him and his girlfriend living on minimum wage, it also very well illustrates the same thing.

I don't know what kind of crappy restaurant they're modeling in this game, but you can make much better money at most places waiting tables than what they are claiming.<p>Also, I like how every decision, no matter if its a good one or not ends up with a "Surprise! You made a good choice that should be free in real life, but we're going to charge you an arbitrary cost anyway!"<p>When I lived on less than this, I sure don't remember these oddball things. And obviously cheaper choices, living further out, are still discusses like they are penalties, "but you still have to pay for gas!" Duh, but it's still a ton cheaper.<p>Opting in to Health Insurance = you don't get sick, but opting out and I got sick twice.<p>How about this one? "Two bills are due today. What do you want to do?"<p>1) Pay mobile phone bill<p>2) Pay car insurance<p>3) Pay both<p>4) Ask a friend<p>where's my #5? Don't pay either? Also..why the hell do I have a mobile phone and a car? I don't remember that being a choice. I'd rather not have a phone and ride the bus.<p>ack...ridiculous.<p>Oh, and $843 left at the end of the month.

Made it through the month with $411 left, a root canal to pay for and apparently I owe a collection agency money for a car.<p>Wasn't terribly impressed with the choices I was given though, because I've been in similar situations in the past and, while it may be very different in the US, I have never had any significant problems. Also, why do bills like car registration cost more if I choose to pay them later? In real life I once had to pay my electricity bill a month late because I didn't have the money - I called them up and they deferred the payment by a month. They didn't suddenly charge me extra.<p>EDIT: Just played it again and made it through the month with $274, with no outstanding bills.

This flash game (ok, flash video) is a much more awesome way to show the same thing:<p><a href="http://www.popmodal.com/video/1251/BILL-COSBY--Economics-Lesson-With-Monopoly-Money" rel="nofollow">http://www.popmodal.com/video/1251/BILL-COSBY--Economics-Les...</a>

"A definition for wealth is spending less than your income." --<a href="http://www.dynamicrange.org/2007/05/food_stamp_chal_6.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.dynamicrange.org/2007/05/food_stamp_chal_6.html</a>

This reminds me of one of my favorite flash games! Third World Farmer!<p><a href="http://www.mofunzone.com/online_games/3rd_world_farmer.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.mofunzone.com/online_games/3rd_world_farmer.shtml</a>

I sit at a keyboard all day typing and earn 100% of my living via the computer. Funny that I couldn't pass the typing test. I'm pretty sure the problem is that I don't have practice copying the text ... my time is spent typing words (and code) that's flowing from my brain.<p>Does anyone still take dictation? Are there really jobs like this? I had an AA at my last job and in the nine years I was there I don't remember ever having her type up notes, etc.

So I made it through the month with 3$ left. It has some interesting facts, but altogether it's a bit odd that everything breaks down in a single month.

Quite a silly game, but it does a decent job of showing how all the options are not always considered by the people who most need to consider them. It's easy to say "I would make a fun homemade gift, take advantage of charitable dental programs, get a roommate," etc., but the people in hard situations often don't have the mindset to do this.

This game seems loaded as in the message behind it. That's fine but I think its slightly misleading. I paid off registration but later I still got charged 1.5k for my car not being registered. Also is it me or for the maths question no matter what you choose does it say you got it wrong? Despite having a college degree.

Meanwhile in India, the government is wondering if 60 cents a day would be a reasonable poverty line for urban areas (somewhat less for rural areas) <a href="http://the-diplomat.com/indian-decade/2011/10/04/govt-backtracks-on-poverty/" rel="nofollow">http://the-diplomat.com/indian-decade/2011/10/04/govt-backtr...</a>

Although people are saying this isn't that good of a simulation because of all the events that happen so fast together, as the saying goes, "There's always someone who has it worse." Just a simple what-if would be fine for this, and this was well-well done (note the double well :] ). Kudos to the creators. :)

$225 gas/electic bill on day 6. Do they charge for utilities in advance and without a grace period in Durham?

I think this game is pretty interesting. It's not realistic by any stretch, but it does get your attention more than yet-another-infographic-with-statistics-on-it. It's a simulation in the very slightest sense of the word, but you probably would have ignored the infographic.

Cool, but apparently I have a kid and a family pet. At what point did I make those decisions?

Reminds me of a game about trying to survive as a peasant in Haiti. Might have been this one: <a href="http://ayiti.globalkids.org/game/" rel="nofollow">http://ayiti.globalkids.org/game/</a><p>Same problem that it had only options rigged for failure to chose from.

Why in the hell does the bottom rung pay so much tax? That is ridiculous. Even in the UK we have a "lower cap" of tax free earnings, so that people who have bugger all money aren't paying tax.

It's interesting that almost all comments thus far uniformly criticize the game for propaganda bias and that real-life is not this hard.<p>A special-ed teacher I work with has a dimmer view than most of the US education system - because she sees so many of its failures and that for a living. I can easily see how the propaganda perception by an outsider is just the everyday reality in the eyes of <a href="http://www.umdurham.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.umdurham.org/</a>, one of the two game sponsers.<p>IMHO the game does a good job of creating a forcing function to make decisions that atleast I haven't had to make in a long while, if ever.<p>Imagining myself as the game designer, suspect I too would favour inciting empathy to accurate "real-life"-ism.

why did i -- as a person with no marketable job skills -- start with 7300 in credit card debt? and why didn't i get a roommate for my apartment i can't afford?

Too bad the game doesn't allow you to ditch the car. Car falling apart is huge money sink. First thing I'd do is to get rid of it.

in America you are still in a first world country!! have you ever lived in Calcutta??? Oh please come on, stop the whining!

For the first year and a half after starting my company I made considerably less than this and got alone just fine.

I've lived on $7ish an hour.<p>It is very, very hard to break even. Any fluctuation in your hours can result in a savings decrease.

This is only for a month. Being broke usually lasts a lot longer.<p>Anyone have any ideas on how to hack this kind of situation?

Way too depressing to play right now as it hits too close to home (or used to). Good game

Not quite how I remember making $8/hr at an internship right out of college for 6 months.

Life isn't that depressive even with a 9$/hr job.

Political propaganda disguised as a 'flash game' tops hacker news...<p>I'll bet the people behind it are laughing at their clever social engineering.

It's hard to simulate poverty. Of course I can make the right decisions. I'm not hungry, and this is a game. Sure I'll choose to buy the cheapest, and healthiest food I can. Real life is different, after being hungry for a while my decisions would be different. I don't feel this game highlighted how the mentality of the situation compounds itself.

I have an undisclosed pet, an $80/mo cell phone plan, and <i>both</i> my gas and electric bills are over $100. Also, I'm adamant about keeping my car, even though I'm right by work. I make very, very poor decisions.<p>(honestly, I learn more about difficult lives by watching Judge Judy and similar)

The game is a lot easier if you act like a total sociopath (e.g. don't buy your mom's medicine, let your pet suffer, etc.)

I quit in the first scenario: "Find a Job" or "Quit".. Anything but a job!