2 ms·
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?
by revorad 15y ago
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.
- ljf 15y ago$300 including rent? I thought I was doing well (in far east London) renting a room in a student share house for £257 a month, 9 years ago. Plus bills.
- revorad 15y agoI'm really cheap, but to be fair that was 5 years ago. But I'm sure if I had to, even now I could live on very little money.
- alttag 15y agoI concur. In metro Atlanta (USA), my mortgage+taxes+fees is rather less than in this game (and what I assume would be a smaller place in-game.) Having a dog and a high-end cell plan, among other expenses seemed incongruous. Visiting schools, given the evening job (and only one job!) should have been trivial, as school are open in the a.m. The food shopping choices were awful too. For a more realistic look (if several years old), a former colleague of mine took the "Food Stamp Challenge", and ate on a budget that could be purchased with food stamps, in response to claims the rate was too low. http://www.dynamicrange.org/2007/05/food_stamp_chal.html http://www.dynamicrange.org/2007/05/food_stamp_chal.html
- i_c_b 15y agoMy hunch is that they had to cartoon up the expenses a bit because a more realisitic version would have had cheaper prices but probably x10 the number of economic transactions, which would have bogged the game down. Same with the amount of bad luck situations. As an example, the player did have really bad luck - but no starting credit card debt, or rolling payday loan debt, or student loan debt from incomplete schooling...