Infographic Gets Panned on Twitter

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Min wage infographicInvestmentZen, which encourages financial independence, created an infographic with advice for living on minimum wage, currently $7.25 per hour. Suggestions include selling your car, moving to a less expensive city, and recognizing that "a lot of the best things in life are free."

Reactions are generally not positive. Twitter users are taking offense at some of the advice, pointing out that, for example, not everyone has the flexibility to move across country. Part of the infographic identifies "excuses" for not moving, including "All of my friends and family live here." Sounds like a good reason to stay put to me, particularly for people living in poverty or close to it.

Others on the Twitter thread note the missing expenses of moving, doing laundry, and children should anyone choose to have them. An obvious logical flaw is in suggesting people sell their car, yet suggesting picking up some Uber shifts.

This reminds me (and others) of a 2013 McDonald's website with advice to employees, including getting a second job. To help employees manage expenses, the site showed a sample monthly budget with $25 for health insurance. McDonald's pulled the site and published this statement:

We have offered the McResource program to help our valued McDonald's employees with work and life guidance created by independent third party experts. A combination of factors has led us to re-evaluate, and we've directed the vendor to take down the website. Between links to irrelevant or outdated information, along with outside groups taking elements out of context, this created unwarranted scrutiny and inappropriate commentary. None of this helps our McDonald's team members. We'll continue to provide service to our folks through an internal telephone help line, which is how the majority of employees access the McResource services.

Discussion:

  • Analyze the full infographic. What visual and organizational design principles from Chapter 9 in the text are used?
  • What other logical flaws can you identify?
  • Overall, do you find the advice useful, or does it enrage you as it does some Twitter users? Should InvestmentZen pull the infographic and issue a statement as McDonald's did in 2013?