What if the rich had to live on little?
Once a year, the richest families have to live for a month on the minimum wage. Same house, same street, much smaller budget.
The first morning. The card is declined at the till.
The first month
On the first morning, the cards stop working. The new account holds about what a full-time worker on the minimum wage earns in a month, and it has to cover food, transport and everything else.
By the evening, group chats in wealthy neighbourhoods are full of questions about bus routes, cheap supermarkets and what you can cook with lentils.
The second year
Families plan ahead. The freezer gets filled the week before, and the children learn to hear no in shops. Anyone caught cheating, for example with a friend’s card, is fined with an extra month.
Most people get through it and talk about it afterwards, a little carefully. A few say it changed how they see money. Others say it changed nothing.
Ten years on
The month is part of the calendar, like a long holiday nobody wants. Schools teach budgeting with real prices, and charities that work with poor families get far more volunteers that month.
People who live on the minimum wage all year are less impressed. Nothing has changed for them, except that more people now know what a bus pass costs.
Who wins
- People on low incomesThe politicians who set the minimum wage have now lived on it, at least once.
- Cheap supermarketsOne month a year they get a lot of new, slightly lost customers.
- Anyone who can cook on a budgetTheir advice is in great demand.
Who loses
- Expensive restaurantsTheir quietest month of the year, every year.
- Children who never saw a price tagThey learn what things cost, fast.
A month on little money isn’t a life on little money. The rich get their savings back on day 31, and everybody knows it, including them.
Would you vote for this law?
0% said yes · 1 vote
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