What if…?

I love questions like this because people come up with all kinds of creative answers and you never know what to expect!

What would happen if a billionaire CEO had to live on the salary of their lowest-paid employees AND it was a reality TV show?

Check out what folks had to say about this on AskReddit.

Make it longer.

“It would be better if they had to live with their lowest salaried employee for a month or two.

In their house, dinner with the family, travel to and from work together, same lunch, kids with homework, the works.

Building that relation would imo do much more for this problem than just “experiencing below your normal standard of living before returning to it”..
You’re more likely to feel empathy for a family you know, and much less likely to forget them.

Anything else would just be another show about wealthy people having a fun adventure to talk about at cocktail parties.”

Let’s reverse it.

“It would be incredibly self-serving and boring.

They would never truly experience what it is like to be in the precarious position of a minimum wage employee living hand-to-mouth and the ‘novelty’ is just salt in the wound.

It would be more interesting to see the reverse.”

Interesting.

“There was this similar themed show in Hong Kong and Mainland China years ago.

They swapped billionaire with bottom feeders, let the rich do the basic job, on the lowest salary, to see how far the rich could go by purely their own effort.

Nearly all of the billionaire admitted that they could not make anywhere, regardless of how hard they worked, even working without sleeping and resting could not give you any accumulation to help climb up to the higher level of the society.

There was only despair, and admission that the divide between the poor and the rich is already a deep valley and mere personal effort makes little sense.

It stirred big debate among the society back then, and I think that was part of the reasons the show got cancelled .

There was also another show in China, swapping senior political figures with community level council workers, to see how good they could do in each other’s posts. The mayors were flooded by the angry mobs who kept asking for more and more benefits that were impossible to fulfill, by the end had to admit the amount of work at basic community level was too much to achieve anywhere.

The show also got cancelled quite soon after a few episodes.”

No problem.

“They’d be fine.

The problem with poverty is not usually day-to-day costs.

People can adjust to that. It’s unexpected expenses that are crippling.”

Gotta keep it real.

“I love reality shows so I’d watch it depending on who produces it.

If it’s too fake, with too many “emotional” moments, advertising and people shouting, I’m out.”

Good point.

“It’s more than just the money. It’s the lack of security these people endure. Not knowing if you’ll lose your job tomorrow and having no savings. Being kicked out of your home. An unexpected bill you can’t afford, which may lead to increasing debt.

Putting these rich people in a “poor” lifestyle for a month isn’t enough. Even if they lost their money and homes, they’ll have such a huge network that they’ll be back on their feet in the time it takes for us peons to earn enough to eat for a week. They can never truly understand what it’s like to be poor or ever face that reality again.

So what would happen? It’d be a completely self-serving advert about how “now I realise that we need to do more for our employees.” The workers get a small vanity bonus, probably give an immigrant worker with limited English a car, pat themselves on the back. Then two weeks later, we’ve all forgotten about the show and they’ll go back to their old ways.”

Back to the routine.

“The CEO would just think “once I get through this 4 weeks I’m back to normal” when in reality people don’t have this.

They wouldn’t know what it would be like to be in that person’s shoes for an extended period of time, not knowing when it’s gonna end.”

Would be interesting.

“I’d be interested to watch a show where the CEO had to personally be financially responsible for the welfare of 50% of their lowest paid employees for 10 years, and their net growth percentage equalled their bonus every year, with a big bonus if both the company and the employees were profitable at the end.”

Be just fine.

“They wouldn’t have any trouble.

Most of them are self made and most have a large number of financial skills that 99% of people don’t. They’d micro their finances and come out better off than most people.

You think someone like Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates, or Elon Musk couldn’t handle it? Or what about Warren Buffet? The dude is already living a modest life.

A lot of dumba**es in the comments seem to fail to realize that a lot of these billionaires were already in a super shi**y position before, and pulled themselves out of it.

These people run massive corporations and charities and you dumbasses seriously think that living your life for a few months would be a challenge? That’s some cringe.”

Not feeling it.

“No. Slumming is not living your entire life in a slum.

Here is what will happen:

Fake billionaires like Trump will come to this show. Real billionaires will probably not.

those who appear on this show will brag about how they are self made and their employees could make do with even less.

We will find out, like Naked and Afraid, that outside of cameras these billionaires were living in their luxury RVs , sipping martinis and having affairs.”

Here’s an idea: if anybody makes over $5M a year, they must take 2 weeks off a year and work as a minimum wage worker.

That should make them respect the reality those people have to go through.