Would you watch a show where a billionaire CEO has to go an entire month on their lowest paid employees salary, without access to any resources which the employee wouldn’t have in today’s society ? What do you think would happen?
Would you watch a show where a billionaire CEO has to go an entire month on their lowest paid employees salary, without access to any resources which the employee wouldn’t have in today’s society ? What do you think would happen?
Comments
No, sounds pretty boring.
>What do you think would happen?
Producers would craft a story about billionaire enduring hardship and learning from it while billionaire continues their normal life off-camera
No. Sounds like performative BS that would only serve to line their pockets and buy goodwill they don’t deserve.
No. That would just another one dogshit reality show, and we have more than enough of that.
It would just portray the “resilience” and “resourcefulness” of the billionaire and how to persevere despite the hardship they experience.
Haven’t things like this already happened ? Making do for a month knowing that you’re going back to your safe life at the end isn’t a great hardship, it’s the grind of barely paying bills month after month for years that’s the real hardship, not being able to afford things they’d take for granted, not having any safety net for when things go wrong etc.
Hasn’t this been done already and the guy was supposed to prove he could become rich again easily, but failed
I feel like a billionaire would only sign up for that show if it was rigged so as to be propaganda that, actually, poverty is just a skill issue and billionaires in low positions can easily succeed.
Haha, it would never happen although I do really wish billie boys would pay their employees better.
How about a reality show where we throw a billionaire into an active volcano? Each week, the public gets to vote on which billionaire, and which volcano. The billionaires can improve their odds of not being selected by funding schools and hospitals. Alternatively, they can elect to play a ‘Four Horseman’ card where they pick one of four cards at random and they’re given a week to fix as much possible out of war, famine, or pestilence, but look out for the Death card, which automatically selects them to be tossed into the gaping maw of the nearest volcano.
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They’d go along with the show, get a ton of publicity, then collect a buttload of money from the ad revanue and subscrptions. I would absolutely watch Elon Musk and Joe Rogan live together like the odd couple for a season or two.
Nothing would happen. Seeing them survive that scenario, for five years, without help from any people in their network of friends. Having to start alllll over from ground zero, in a new industry where they can’t take shortcuts by “making one phone call” to one of their friends.
THAT
I would watch.
E.g. let’s see them catch a disease that gets them sick and they have to spend a couple months in the medical system trying to get better and then at the end of it they are only 90% better and the other 10% just comes and goes and then degrades their ability. Let’s see them “grind their way” through that with just sheer will, where they only have access to the same low cost medicine of middle class. Oh and by the way, they still have to juggle everything else while dealing with the medical thing. And still have to navigate allllll the other pitfalls of not having friends in high places and not having access to huge resources.
That’d something to watch.
Realistically it’s just going into withdraw.
Poverty isn’t felt fully within a single month.
Make them do that for 3-5-10 years and now we’re talking.
That life is lame therefore the show would be lame…so no.
It’d be comforting to know some billionaires had to live a month surviving on a minimum wage though. I don’t think many wouldn’t get a lesson but if a single one decides to improve worker conditions it’s a win.
One month wouldn’t mean anything. Have him do it for one year then we’ll see how he reacts.
Sounds dumb. It’s like taking a lower middle class American and throwing them in a third world country where they would be comparatively well off to see if they can survive. Like what’s the point? The ceo earns their pay if they make more than they’re paid. If the ceos decision creates $300m in value why shouldn’t they get paid $10-50m a year?
Front line workers may only make like $15 an hour cause they only make the company $40 an hr.
It would be boring as shit
There’s no incentive for a CEO to do this, they pull more in 5 minutes of their stock portfolio’s earnings than they could ever expect to get from such a show’s production talent budget, syndication payments, or revenue from streaming.
The closest we’ll ever see to this is likely “Undercover Boss” where company owners spent time as ‘new employees’ of their own firms, to see how well things are run, and potentially find gems in the rough that then get a career boost or some feel-good assistance with their personal lives.
McDonald’s ceo is not going to go get paid 7.50 for a month.
Jeff bezos isn’t going to go work in an Amazon warehouse for a month
you’ve been caught. cheeky
No, because knowing “them,” they would cheat.
They would be fine. Most CEO’s are not the lazy idiots Reddit likes to portray them as. Many came from modest backgrounds. They know how to work and are not averse to putting in long hours.
The world doesn’t need more faked poverty tourism in a bullshit reality show.
One month is nothing
Ok what illegal thing are you planning?
The only way I would watch something like that would be if it was 24/7 streamed to prove that the CEO is following the rules.
I’d watch it every week just for the drama
No, because it would only be for a month. Make it a year and isolate him from everything he has access to as well, then I’d watch
Month? Give it a year and I would watch it.
I’d rather watch a show where a randomly chosen experienced employee replaces the billionaire CEO and we all find out the CEO isn’t special.
This show could go on forever with a new company each week.
id also watch a show where tge lowest paid employee of a company has to spend an entire month as the CEO and write up the 5 year strategic plan for review and adoption by the board then follow the results as everyone executes exactly to that plan.
No.
Anyone going on the show would either live normally off camera / skate by on their name and status or they would make it into a story about how hard working and resourceful they are. If they couldn’t do either they would simply not go on the show. You are also asking them to take a month off work, I know reddit likes to say CEOs do nothing but most of them can’t just disappear for a month and have the company be fine.
If you could somehow get someone on and could guarantee they are legitimately living off the money and not using hidden money or connections to get by then it would still be boring. You would get a couple episodes of “this is kind of hard” and past that it’s a show about a person working a job? Boring.
If you expect them to break down crying and double the pay of their employees then you would be disappointed. If they were struggling they would just scrape by into the end and run back to their mansion at the end.
This idea is still parroted around the Internet despite absolutely no aspect of it being interesting or possible to accomplish and the end result being boring anyway.
At the end of the day, they would still have access to resources their employees don’t at the very least they know that in 30 days they can go back to a life of luxury
So they don’t have to worry about saving for retirement etc
Since they know they will have money again after only 30 days it’s no problem. Even without anything.
The real problem is not knowing what you do after that time if you just continue to have almost nothing. Something a billionaire would never understand.
So your TV show could be cool if you just take everything forever. Otherwise it’s not worth it.
If they are a billionaire CEO, they have the brains to make more money than their lowest paid employee, so why would they do it? This idea basically asks them to purposely choose to not only give up the reward of their position, but be worse off than the person they are supposed to be like, because they have the resume to get a better job. Why do you think CEOs who leave a company, by choice or not, have such an easy time getting high-level work? Also 1 month is too short for an answer to be given, and like I said, they can easily get a better job quickly, even without the resume
There really arent that many billionaire CEOs
The reality is they’d do fine.
For a month they could easily do it, it would just be incredibly boring, they would preach and show off about how disciplined they because when work is done they just sit at home watching TV so they never have to spend anything.
Or worse they’ll get promoted quickly for suggesting / organising new business processes to maximise results.
It will just make low paid workers look bad for complaining.
There is way too many holes in the plot though.
One of the major pain points of being poor, is that you don’t know whats coming–unexpected bills always arrive at the worst time. You can’t mimick that in a month.
Adding to that, a month isn’t nearly long enough. Just the fact that you know it’s over in 30 days, means its basically free real estate. There is nothing to worry about, just make it through these 30 days. People who live hand to mouth could do that so easily.
The main problem when you’re poor is that there is never any space to breathe, but if you know you only need to hold your breath for a 30 seconds and then your free; I think those 30 seconds will be just fine and over in an instant.
For this to work, you would need to prank them on a scale so large that its basically impossible. I am talking hidden cameras, and them loosing all their shit, without the prospect everything sorting itself out.
If you want to give them the despair of being poor, then you need to give them the feeling of the endless grind, the treadmill. The constant weighing of where to put your money. The feeling “I guess I dont need my teeth, lets not spend money on the dentist, and buy a new pair of shooes so i dont get fired for dressing poorly.”
Not to mention the most important thing. You need to nuke his network. Being poor, doesn’t just mean finacially. Social capital matters. No easy loans to get back up from a mate — no lending your mates summerhouse while you get your shit together. No easy introductions to a job. No — the whole world doesn’t even know you exist.
If you can put that on camera, sure I’d watch it. But anything less, and it would just be a “see its not that hard–why tf are you poor? noobs” ending.
As Pulp put it:
> But still you’ll never get it right
> ‘Cause when you’re laid in bed at night
> Watching roaches climb the wall
> If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah
Whatever hardship these guys might experience on this show, they would know it ends in a few weeks, or they can just snap their fingers and go back to their old life if shit hits the fan. That’s nothing like experiencing the exact same hardship but without those safety nets.
Switching places and bank accounts would be more interesting.
Nah. It would be easy for anybody to get through a month of struggle if they know they’ll be a billionaire at the end of it. It would prove nothing.
There is a Dutch tv program where a rich family and poor family switch places for a day.
At one stage, our fkn idiot of a prime minister Paul Keating spent a whole 2 weeks on the dole just to see how much a human needs to survive. 2 weeks? Fuck him and his assholes he rode on in with. Australia really hated him in the end
Isn’t this what Undercover Boss was supposed to be?
I’ve seen it happen before IRL with a billionaire’s wife who mentalboomed after he cheated, the (poor?) lady just ended up depressed and unmotivated and wasted away on cheap fast foods.
A millionaire did try to go from homeless back up to a million and ended up calling quits a few months in. Said his mental was shot
It’s called undercover boss it’s about a decade old
No, anyone can do a month.
Being poor for one month with a guaranteed billionaire life waiting for you at the end is nothing like being actually poor.
Assuming that absolutely none of it was faked or behind the scenes the billionaire was still going around with all their money I think:
-Billionaire would go shopping, buy all the normal stuff they buy, realise they’ve spent 50% of the budget already
-Billionaire drives home (depending on the show either they get to keep their fancy car and house or they have to go with the average for what the workers would have)
-Billionaire deals with bills but the show never considers things like paying off a car or house because the billionaire owns them all completely so they actually still get an extra couple hundred
-Billionaire says how they never realised how hard it was, sighs, looks past the camera with a thousand yard stare and says “I should do better for them”
-Show ends, billionaire changes nothing
I wouldn’t watch it tbh.
Shows like this have been tried before – with a range of results. In a couple of the UK versions I saw there were ‘spontanenous’ running into an old friend who took the ‘living for a month on benefits’ MP out for lunch or similar.
The problem is these shows end up with a poor conclusion – enduring a month like this is not impossible, it may not be pleasant but it can be done. If we’re lucky the celeb/MP/CEO gains an appreciation that some people don’t have the luxury of having hot food and the heating on.
Sometimes the celeb copes – they just eat noodles or rice and peas for a month and scrimp and budget. Not impossible, not pleasant but does lean to the myth that ’50 pence a week is fine to live on.’
This is dangerous and not representative – firstly the celeb has access to their education, experience and confidence (plus being followed by a film crew.) – this helps them budget, plan, haggle etc. The fact that they’re going back to ‘normal’ in a month also means they can resist more temptation – ‘that steak is going to taste all the sweeter…’ Education and experience also allows better use of the system – knowing that a travel card is an investment, understanding your rights, being able to explain your position – these aren’t skills everyone has.
There’s also the short-termism – the welfare benefits for a month have to last a month – no saving for the future, no debts from the past. There also aren’t the unexpected costs – car breaks, boiler breaks, new shoes etc. Clothing too is doled out by wardrobe and has to last for a month – no Vimes boot theory here, or the pressures of ‘work clothes, fun clothes, societally expected clothes etc.’
With that is the ‘light at the end of the tunnel factor’ – it’s far more crushing to know that you will never get out of poverty then it is to think ‘Just have to make it one more week then I can go back to my big warm house and have a big warm meal.’
There aren’t the additional costs of human irrationality – people spend money on things they can’t afford for reasons other than pure survival – you want to make your kids happy so you buy them a new toy, or buying them sweets calms them when you’re out of energy. You buy makeup or clothes to look nice, to build up your confidence, to fit in with your peers, to find romance. You feel sad so need a quick pick me up – booze, cigarettes, weed, sugar, takeaways etc. You need to keep a social status – you stand your round at the bar, you go for drinks with the girls in the office, you put in for the collection for Sharon’s birthday or baby or get-well-soon flowers. You get told by the media that you’re missing out so spend to be involved – music, fashion, clubbing etc. You get told you’re imperfect so spend money on diets, gym membership, getting organised, taking classes etc.
Celebs etc doing this can get preachy – ‘I lived on minimum wage by eating only rice and peas, walking in the park for ‘entertainment’ and going to bed at 1800 to save on electricity. It’s just discipline.’ ignoring that that is survival, not living – not everyone has the same expectations – a latenight walk is safe for some unsafe for others, it’s easy to save money on birthday gifts if you have no friends, people get sick of subsistence living quickly.
At best these shows might give a window into the lives of the less fortunate for the celeb or CEO; but there is the danger of only seeing the ‘virtuous poor’ – pensioner Edith who struggles hand to mouth; and thus creating the myth of the undeserving poor – because they’ve got a TV, a playstation and a fridge. Also in suggesting that poverty is caused by some moral failure of self discipline.
However like all reality TV it is edited to satisfy a storyline that the producers want to follow and they can set you up for success or failure – or just the spectacle of watching Elon Musk scrub toilets or have to take the bus.
It might be more interesting watching them try to live their current lifestyles on the wages of the poor – telling Bezos that he would have to clean toilets 8 hours a day for a year to afford that bottle of champagne he’s drunk and asking them to justify it – is the booze too expensive, their cleaners undervalued?
He would cheat. Then try bribery. Then cop out on the deal.
If you can’t factor this through to the logical end, is there a point to say what is wrong with the idea?
no and im sick of this question being asked. the hard part of poverty is that it never ends. anybody could LARP for a month as a poor. its not that hard to go a month working shitty hours and eating ramen. whats hard is realizing that it never ends. that there is no way out and you are stuck for life, not for a month.
No I wouldn’t watch it and I don’t care what would happen. If this is anyone’s idea of entertainment then I suggest some therapy is in order.
Then there could be a spin off where someone has to start a multi billion pound company from scratch.
How dya think it would go?
Do you mean the film, trading places
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Undercover boss
I would imagine that those people are very resistent to understanding the real limitations of such a life, and would still explain everything by poor people being poor because they choose to.
Compassion, empathy, and the ability to put yourself in another person’s role are rare for the ultra-rich. They also tend to have delusions about how much of their success has been their own making, ignoring factors like pure luck, their childhood homes etc.
chinese did that; the billionaires gave up after a while
There are two ways I imagine the plot can go. Either the billionaire changed his ways and no longer looks down on “trivial” problems, or it’s revenge porn where he got bullied by some worse rich people and the hook is the payoff of him getting back his wealth, or a mixture of both plots.
Unless it’s a grimdark setting he goes full villian or dies or something idk.
I feel like this is the same as asking “would you watch a show if somebody became a superhero/is a superhero”. The million dollar question is how well it was written/directed or casted.
Reading other comments I misread and thought its a plot to a movie. If it’s “reality tv” then 99% we know any drama is just bullshit.
No, it would be terrible
These things never work because for the billionaires it’s nothing more than a little adventure. Why? Because they know it’s only for a month. And when it’s over they can go back to their life of luxury
It’s like an escape room for them. A bit of jeopardy, but it’s not real. So they learn nothing from it, it doesn’t change them.
How could it? You need a certain mindset to become a billionaire, and month of cosplaying “poor person” doesn’t alter that one bit.
A full year or two? Maybe. We have to tolerate and pound sand for those mfs already so why tf would I wanna warch any of ‘em on TV… they’d cheat the show anyway.
I think they would be cared for off camera, and the show would turn into scripted false drama.
Just like most realitry shows.
One month doesn’t give them the same experience anyways. They’ve already paid for prime health care, dental care, and they know there’s a mansion at the end of the road to go back to.
The movie Trading Places is essentially this plot. Stars Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy. Fantastic film, made during the 80’s using tropes that would likely be politically incorrect for the current Generation, so a remake for current times wouldn’t be the same.
And they have to take on the race of the person.
No because it’s not real at the end of the month he will be a billionaire again … during the month he won’t have to worry about health care and real life things like saving to buy a house because again he will be back o being. A billionaire at end of month … it would be like wearing black face in 2025
Why should anyone even consider this? As someone firmly middle class, I would never even consider something like that.
1 month? Nah. 1 year or more, edited for entertainment, hell yeah
No. I think they would struggle to pay their bills and eat. Why would I want to watch someone else be poor too?
Do it for 60 years
We already had that rich guy who froze all his accounts and said he was going to prove that he could make a million dollars starting from zero with nothing but his super special can-do attitude. Even with the deck still totally stacked in his favor (he was given a free place to stay by one of his buddies and still had all the connections and education his privileged lifestyle afforded him), he still tapped out after a few months after only making something like 45K.
He got sick, backed out basically immediately, and learned nothing. He concluded his “experiment” by saying he still absolutely would’ve hit a million dollars easily if he didn’t have to jeopardize his health and that he and all his rich buddies are simply built different. Man was simply incapable of realizing that poor people don’t get to tap out when things get tight, they just suffer through a lower quality of life until it kills them.
We don’t need a TV show designed to let more of these monsters engage in poverty tourism and cast themselves as working class heroes, we need a TV show where they are systematically regulated and taxed out of existence. Or torn apart by wild dogs in the street. I think I would watch that.
They still wouldn’t understand. They would know a solution/end would come to their experience. They wouldn’t be worried about where their food and rent money would come from next month, or that their car could break down at any time, etc. Poor people don’t have that.
No, at best they’ll cheat offscreen, at worse they’ll make it a PR performance for billionaires.
I don’t want to see billionaires fake suffering, I want billionaires gone.
I don’t think one month is nearly long enough to appreciate living check-to-check. Six months minimum would be better, but it would have to include real world situations like evictions, shopping for food on your own, public transportation and microwaving Hot Pockets.
Nothing would happen. 30 days later he’d go back to his life as normal. Make him do it for 1 year
I know this isn’t a popular opinion on Reddit but a lot of those guys (the ones that earned it not born with wealthy) have the skills to make money from nothing. I know a guy that is independently wealthy but is a pretty smart guy with a lot of charisma. If you stripped him of everything 100% he would take what he has and start building it back.
They wouldn’t care. They’d know that the good ol’ times are a month away and just bear any difficulties. The problem with poverty isn’t that it’s difficult, it’s that it’s endless. No hope of a better tomorrow.
Isn’t that close to the BBC’s “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!” ?
No. Because it will be scripted bs and no one would learn anything. Just more useless content.
Its would be like the secret boss show where they buy a single mom a car at the end.
Sounds like mel brooks “life sucks” 😅
No but i watched the movie, Mel Brooks was great. “Life Stinks”
Or we tax them and record them having meltdowns and saying things that don’t make sense in front of a microphone or seeing them post tweets that make no sense.
Oh wait
They would probably be completely fine apart from some incredibly minor inconveniences
As long as they don’t have any massive unforseen costs such as sudden medical expenses at which point they would probably stop taking part in the show
Who do you think funds these shows? Do you think the billionaires that control the media are going to want to make anti billionaire media? Sounds pretty stupid to me. At best itll be a fake storyline about how a billionaire overcame being poor by “good business sense”.
If it was made in a way that they’d be forced to actually live in those conditions, even outside of the recording hours. Maybe something like a Truman show?
Or dump them on an island with Trumanesque vibe. A store, a workplace, needing to actually work to get money, a studio apartment, no restaurant outside of maybe a McDonald’s and cameras everywhere except the bathrooms. Break a rule of the program/show? Contractually obligated to donate 10% of total net worth to a charity voted on by the viewers.
Or just change it to a survival island sort of program. Like Robinson but without all the food and camera crew and luxeries accused of occuring off screen. Guess something closer to Lost? Give them each 3 cans of food, a large water bottle, a go pro each, a book or two on survival and a Swiss knife. Let them have a checkup once a day or every other day, to ensure they’re not seriously injured or sick, change batteries/gopro and give them a chance to leave.