The helpful guide that McDonald’s just published offering practical tips on how its workers can subsist on poverty wages is full of ingenious ideas: Get a second job! Don’t squander money on trifles like heat and health care! Yet, it is missing one key suggestion: Apply for food stamps and other government assistance immediately so McDonald’s can keep the corporate welfare flowing.
The mere existence of the “Practical Money Skills Budget Journal” disseminated by America’s most prominent fast-food brand offers the latest evidence that national thinking about economic matters has descended into the intellectual equivalent of dumpster-diving. We are dispensing with complicated yet necessary conversations about how to invest in productive enterprises that might deliver millions of good paychecks. We seem politically incapable of lifting the minimum wage though — as I have argued here before — that would amount to a jolt of economic stimulus benefiting everyone.
Instead, we have pundit David Brooks inventing fantastical reasons why able-bodied men have supposedly lost their appetite for work -– it’s just not macho enough anymore, what with all those microwave ovens in office kitchens.And now we have a major employer of the working poor arming its employees with this handy new survival kit: a line item budget that can help them survive on less than $8 an hour and still sleep indoors.
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Am I crazy or is it acceptable to expect someone working on minimum wage to have a roommate or significant other who’s working? So no doubling up of jobs at all.
The healthcare one is ridiculous.
But maybe paying $100 bucks a month for cable/cell is a bad idea – here’s a better one for 20 bucks (http://republicwireless.com/).
Also, what are you doing with a car on minimum wage? Drop that (and the insurance) get a bike and now you actually have some money to spend on food.
On an aside – I’m a little disgusted that only having $30 bucks a day in spending cash is considered unlivable. I’ve had the privilege of spending a lot of time with an amazing woman who raised 4 kids by herself on less than minimum wage. Learn to cook and do things for yourself. You’ll see the cost of living in America can be ridiculously low when you aren’t paying people to mow your lawn.
I have quite a bit to mow. I’d love to find someone who would even do the work. THAT is the problem.
Our gardener/weedpuller is the hardest working guy I have ever watched and our housekeeper the same.
I like to mow so I guess it isn’t too bad.
Our insurance is more like $550 a month and the phones are $275. Car payment when I had one was $400. Real estate taxes $550 month.
I don’t know who made up their budget numbers but come on, no basis in reality.
Holly CRAP! Who are you screwing for an income?
No basis in reality? Indeed!!! Can I apply? I’d love to live where no one really works and all the money grows on trees.
Seriously, $275 a month for PHONES?! I pay about $40 with T-Mobile even. Add in my Internet, TV and land line for about another $65 and I still haven’t paid HALF what you pay for just phones. (Are you some kind of fool or something?)
I also don’t live in Beverly Hills or some other similar community where all the people are seriously out of touch with reality. As a result, my taxes aren’t exactly out of touch either. But then I see you pay $550 a MONTH?! (I think I have my answer that, yes you are a fool.)
I even mow my own yard! It’s not too hard when you do it REGULARLY instead of running on a treadmill or doing those ridiculous pilates for exercise — and drinking tap water in plastic bottles from France!
Although we are pretty close on insurance which I assume means ALL insurance (health, car, home, life, etc.).
I bet you don’t think you make enough money. Don’t you?
Rich people can have the same problems as middle class Americans. They just buy nicer versions of the things middle class Americans get.
Not really; They just blow more of their wad on extended warranties.
I’m Robin Leech. Sucking up to the rich. Showing you things you can’t afford. Making you feel like the lowest of lows — See this house behind me? It does not have a Micky-Dees dumpster behind it so you can not afford it. You’ll always be dirt poor…
I see your name follows function. Us rich? Far from it asshat. With Sprint unlimited cell (2x) and keeping a damn land line for the alarm that
‘s what it runs. As far as real estate taxes dumbass that’s what it runs in our area due to zoning.
I was finish cut mowing 16 acres now down to 7.
As far as insurance goes, no, that is only car and house. Not life and health.
We also live within 2 miles of the worst area in our region.
No, I don’t think I make enough and salary surveys bear that out as I make about 30-50k a year less than what others do in my profession. Why? I like where I work and that means more to me than what a dick head like you thinks.
Definition of rich time after time is anyone who makes more money than you.
Agreed, and compared to life in Haiti, these whiners are filthy rich!
But compared to Haiti, Afghanis are filthy and rich.
Just checked them out. I’ll be switching over to them when my contract is up…. although I should probably do a cash flow analysis to see if I’m just better off breaking the contract I have now.
Thanks for the tip!
Speaking from first hand experience, I want to dissuade you from going with Republic Wireless while they only offer the Motorola Defy XT. It’s a cheap quality phone that is not up to the task. The biggest problem is the very small internal memory (I don’t remember how much, look it up) which is very quickly maxed out, at which time your phone will begin to freeze up. You might think that having an external memory card (like the 32 gig one I used in mine) would alleviate that problem, but no, the phone insists on installing everything to the internal memory anyways. I had such a bad experience with this sub-standard android. I do like Republic, and when they come out with a better phone, which they say they will soon, I may return.
Anyone who has ever looked for a job knows that McDonald’s is absolute rock bottom as far as any career goes. Next in line might be Walmart (as if there’s a difference now that the two have semi merged). But that doesn’t mean someone looking for work for the first time shouldn’t consider it or even someone simply trying to avoid becoming homeless.
Or does it?!
Anyone remember the 2005 movie “Fun With Dick & Jane” starring Jim Carrey & Tea Leoni? ( http://imdb.com/title/tt0369441/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 ) Did you really think that movie was a comedy? Funny, yes! But watching it again seems more like a “how to” or some sort of second prophecy now that our economy is supposedly booming again. An economy where about 1 out of every 6 people are now on food stamps and where Wall Street is again hitting new highs.
And yet… ain’t it funny how McDonalds always seems to make Wall Street’s Fortune 500 list?
Pssssst! That “unemployment” figure is also total bullshit if you happen to be buying into the idea that America’s economic problems are somehow getting better. But don’t tell Wall Street! I have stocks that I want them AND YOU McDonalds consumers, er, cattle to pay for. (Isn’t that right, Adam Curry, Andrew Horrowitz & John C. Dvorak? No sense WORKING when your MONEY can do it for you.)
I hadn’t realized they remade Fun With Dick and Jane. The original, with George Segal and Jane Fonda was a riot.
But as far as it goes, until recently McDonald’s jobs with the exception of manager or franchisee were the jobs you had in high school or maybe college. I don’t go there to eat much anymore, but you see older people working there now. Shame.
I have to disagree:
Oh. Meh. God. That eliphant should so sue him.
read as “oh meh gawd” — He is so going to go to Fail.
I just crapped my pants laughing. OOOPS!
bobbo? You there? Is this because of AGW or something? Please tell me it is.
I also hate it when this happens:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_Sl3BlsVc
slaves gonna slave and occasionally get sucked up into an eliphant’s ruminitions.
“There’s room in the elephant”
My first move if money gets tight is to dump dish. I do have a car but it is old enough to be in the 8th grade. So far it has never needed a major repair. I paid $10,000 for it. I guess I should be living in smaller housing but the house is older than I am and I got it cheap.
Its not a question of how cheap you got it but its a question of how much it will cost to keep it running (same as the car too. If the price of gas goes up to $30/gallon, you ain’t going nowhere far or often.)
Its not the price to buy things but the cost to keep it in operating condition, viz: the cost of the infrastructure.
If the water plant operator goes broke, if doesn’t matter how good your taps are. You’re buying bottled water.
I could start typing here, but it would take all day…
1. Property taxes based on HOW MUCh you have paid for your home, or the VALUE of your home..or anything ELSE..
Property tax should be based on PROPERTY, not the house.
PROPERTY tax, should be based on POPULARITY of your area. MORe traffic means they have to fix the ROADS MORE, and keep COPS and fire dept on call, MORE often.
Want to save money on RENT, get OUT of the MAIN CITY AREA..RENT is based on 10 times the Taxes.
ASIDE: Everyone should get a basic living HOME.
2. TRICK with food..Secret ingredient. They found a neat thing, mixing FAT(oil) sugar, SALT makes you hungry and thirsty.. you WONT get full on it. AND ITS CHEAP.
3. Farmers are getting <$3 per 100lbs of potatoes..you pay $2 for 4oz(1/3lb) of french fries. You pay $1 per pound at the store.. thats a GOOD markup..and farmers want more money.
4. ONLY places you can SAVE money…
CHEAP HOUSE..CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP(Im a bird) FIND a landlord, if you cant, KEEP LOOKING, DONT DEAL WITH COMPANIES.
YOU COOK the food. NO CHIPS. $4 for 10oz of chips, is paying LOTS of money for those potatoes.
1 time per month, SPEND 1 days pay check for a meal OUT.
NOW.
interesting way to make money?
LOOK around…there are TONS of fruit trees and such around many towns. PICK THEM. Make your own jellies/jams/spreads…Cherries apples pears, are generally SITTINg there and no one wants them anymore. See if the people will pay you to pick them..otherwise they destroy the ground and anything under them..
LAWN MOWING…5 yards a day at $20 each,,,$100 per day. THINK ABOUT IT. Every 2 weeks the same yards. 50 yards..and you get 2 days off per week..EASY. $5000 every 2 weeks.(and $20 is CHEAP for mowing a yard.)
Property tax should not be levied at all. With it, nobody owns their land — why be required to feed and house your slaves when you can make them feed and house themselves? We’re always under threat to get that fiat $$ somewhere. If anything, it should be paid in something produced off the land.
So you went ahead and started typing anyway.
Check your math.. 5 lawns a day @ $20 each = $100
$100 * 5 days = $500 per week so $100o per 2 weeks and $2000 per month
For you numbers you have to do 25 lawns a day @ $20 per lawn for $500 per day * 10 days= $5000
If each lawn only takes 30 minutes it will take 12 and a half hours without breaks, travel time, or loading/unloading time just to do all those lawns
Minimum Wage is for:
Minimum Education
Minimum Skills / Experience
Minimum Effort
It’s a reasonable pay system based on meritocracy. I agree and most agree. You’re not contributing anything to the discussion.
The more difficult question is what is the low point (baseline) for minimum wage? If set too low, you foster an environment of perpetuating that, possible for generations. If set too high, well, of course that’s bad too.
It’s self-regulating. Americans won’t work below a certain wage. And employers won’t pay for more than what an American is willing to do a particular job for.
The only thing that puts a wrench into things are issues like employers hiring illegal immigrants who will work for far less than any American would be willing to do.
For real. Just try to get a documented american to sneak a pound of Alaskan Thunderfuck across state lines up his butt — Not that anyone should be concerned about that; Free market/gov interdiction forces and all.
Glad you put the illegal alien, fly in the ointment, issue which is a real issue.
However, I’m still not fully bought in to the notion (albeit a sensible one) that minimum wage is set by that willing to take the lowest wage.
Never mind costly turnover and shitty productivity in paying spartan wages or that decent money in the hands of consumers, boosts demand for goods and services. If you set a minimum wage all employers can be at a competitive standing as all companies generally in that field are required to follow suit.
Government-mandated minimum wage is a carrot dangled in front of the poor / lower middle class. The only persons generally benefiting from such things is the politician who got re-elected by convincing people that they are getting exploited by their employers.
The “victory” the poor and lower middle-class achieve is short lived since the cost of goods and services will all go up in relative lockstep. Which means the poor / lower middle class get nothing out of the whole thing except that it’ll just cost them more money to buy the same things they were buying before.
It’s a perpetual scam IMHO. But it buys votes.
It’s called big companies adding to the costs of their smaller competitors.
No. No. It’s a valid niche. What one has to do to be succesful is to nonchalantly lay out a large sheet of parchment paper (not plastic — it does not breath and encourages mold) inside the dumpster and trip-wire it with an Obama-phone with the Tweet-Pee app. Your pickup is usually ready ’bout 1:30 am or so.
The human cost of cheap food? McD is only doing what every other well run corporation is doing, fulfilling it’s responsibilities to it’s shareholders. Consumers need to be aware how their cheap meals are being paid for. By underpaid workers, animals surviving in bulk feed lots, economies of scale which have destroyed the small farm. I love my weekly big mac value meal, but if I am near a family owned burger place, I’m going there.
And also, the lax security-check practices (Dallas?). One can be fast-tracked through from pissing in a cup to pissing on the burgers within the span of an afternoon House run-through on USA network.
I’m not complaining. If I had to drug test to work at one of those places and I find out the people you work for have got three letters for a name; Then, yea. You get the special sauce.
My new personal favorite is a place called Culver’s. The franchise originates from Wisconsin. They’re the best of Wendy’s and the best of Dairy Queen put together.
I LOVE their frozen custard…. beats DQ’s soft serve in a heart beat. Rich taste and silky smooth texture.
I also love their breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches … a common Northern-Midwest delicacy. Hard to find when you leave the Northern-Midwest.
Dayum. That sound good. I think I just cummed a little. It a good thing that army base CID be in da queue up next.
fulfilling it’s responsibilities to it’s shareholders.
Too bad that doesn’t mean actually mean giving you something healthy, tasty and/or nutritious.
McDonald’s stock-in-trade isn’t food, but the promise of food.
Like Starbuck’s, they are primarily a real-estate firm.
That people actually buy their oil-boiled pink slime on a soggy sawdust bun has always amazed me.
I quit going there in the sixties.
“Rick, could I have my breakfast, please?”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-eREiQhBDIk
It’s the new America.
All McDonalds is doing is being honest.
They are saying “Don’t expect to work here full time – ever”.
“Don’t expect to make a good living here – ever”.
“Expect to be on Government healthcare – forever”.
You gonna be lookin’ to fill a post at Wendy’s if we catch you gizzing on that feds’ burgur one more time!
Don’t except anything.
Not justice.
Not fair treatment.
Not even to die with dignity.
Expect to be squeezed out of your last nickel and thrown onto the pile of excrement known as history by the Corporation.
The accountants have won…
Very good point. A very convenient misunderstanding for the banks laughing all the way home. Debt forgiveness aids the borrower. New debt to finance continuing trade deficits helps to keep food on the table and cars on the road today, leaving the bill for the grand-children to pay. New (official) debt to refinance old maturing debt in a non-default default aids the (private sector) lenders and investors, or the (private sector) guarantors, that is the writers of CDS protection, at the expense of multilateral taxpayers. Don’t look now, but the mutualization of credit exposures is well underway.
Tim says:
7/18/2013 at 8:25 pm
bobbo? You there? Is this because of AGW or something? Please tell me it is. //// Thanks for the Call Out. I’ve been avoiding this thread as I’ve been living on ZERO income for the past good number of years. Well…. interest on savings, inheritance… all giving me a view that is unique and mostly irrelevant.
There are lots of tangential issues this one raises though. In no order:
1. Not “directly” related to AGW==but all things are INDIRECTLY related. Degree of Separation set only by your intellect and imagination.
2. ECA==right on. Best post in a while.
3. Always have to mention Karl Marx. The opposition/tension inherent and unavoidable in Capital vs Labor. ALL political/gubment decisions putting a thumb on one side of the scale or the other. Yes–big gubment has lots of thumbs. Always best when the thumb is somewhere viewable on the scale and not in your eye.
4. The number, quality, pay of jobs in a society is directly and indirectly affected by gubment policy. When one interest gains too much advantage over the others (like TODAY) then unnecessary misery results.
5. I need a beer AND I’m boring myself. I will give my favorite example of economics and life that I learned on vacation in Denmark: I bargained too late in the evening and wound up without a room for the night. Had to spend a cold wet evening under a tree in a park. How I yearned for an empty cardboard box. All to ECA’s point that you can live very cheaply with 99% of the benefit/utility of the subject contemplated===but “society” won’t allow you to stand under a tree at night, much less use a cardboard box.
All to the point—I see more and more articles about criminalizing being poor.
Everything is a balance, critically separating cause from effect.
Beer in the Freezer waiting for that Beer Slush I enjoy so much. Next repeat===that day in College when Prof asked us what we would do right now if this was the last week of our life. People gave answers. Prof then challenged why we were in class. All to the point…. what we do with our lives is a choice……and it took years for me to recognize: and how we appreciate the consequences.
Basis for Morality: Recognizing we are all more the same than different.
FREEEEEEEEEEEEDOM: leaving other people alone.
Yea, verily!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
Always a good skit. I like the last example of going to work a half hour before going to bed and paying for the privilege to go to work.
Last week, thread about, or did I just read it elsewhere about slave wage earners having to pay fees to remove their wages pursuant to credit card salary payment mechanisms? Employer saves bookkeeping and other related costs but employees indeed pay to go to work ((get a check)). Probably “legal” as long as the net/net is above minimum wage???
Two points to the skit: those old men became successful with the help of those around them and a good bit of luck and yes, hard work. Lots of people work hard though and don’t have the help or luck. Rich always enjoy thinking they did it all on their own………//// And what the comedians describe as their own rough childhoods is what our kiddies of today are actually facing. When 95% of the wealth increase in our nation for the past 30 years is captured by the top 1% creating the greatest wealth disparity ever seen in the Western Hemisphere…….the water is building up behind the ice dam.
That interpretation could be straining at it just a wee bit — but with Python, it’s usually ‘all of the above’.
My take-away was that they’re four overflowingly-affluent club members having a bullshitting contest and highlighting that all of them are actually clueless over a condition buffered out at least ten generations back.
The Rich and Upper Classes are without exception lampooned by MP as TOTALLY Clueless and unselfaware. So–they are all totally BS’s–but not in the self aware “Yo Momma” kind of contest. They are all bragging about what they “over came” not how clever they can be.
I recall one of those stately manors wifey and I were visiting and somehow we bumped into the owner of the place. “Tried” to exchange some polite chit chat but…… it was like a Monty Python skit. Owner “so polite” and removed from the public display of his own life….. clueless… in a totally removed way. He seriously would wonder why the poor don’t eat cake.
Ohh, It can’t be that bad. You probably sat on his cat or gobbed on his carpet, or something.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jhm4SMlGnbk
If the Monty Python troupe didn’t address it then it is not, never was, nor ever shall be of any social relevance. Of course, thats not to say that they’re not stuffed to the gills with silly bullshit to!
Litterbin — an awful, tinny sort of word
http://youtube.com/watch?v=T70-HTlKRXo
On a chaperoned trip years ago, it was understood that anyone going on a sandy walk-about amongst the crabs must carry $5 or risk getting arrested for ‘vagrancy’ — I don’t remember if that was actually written down as sub-part ‘rules’ of the excursion, but everyone believed it to be the case.
With states like Florida restricting feeding the homeless {as with feral cats — if you feed them, you own them, I guess} I’ve no doubt that such arbitrary standards are used as excuse to pick up anyone for any reason.
I never go here but it popped up in the query:
“Harsh. At least if I were desperate for money I could get $5 from everyone just by mugging them. And then getting them arrested.
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=55655
Aint it funny how not having five bucks can be used as an excuse to incarcerate a ‘vagrant’ while having five bucks can lead to a similar outcome for being a ‘drug pusher’?
Still, my challenge goes unaccepted as I was ruminating on AGW causality to an elephant’s puckering butt-hole.
Oh THAT tangent?===Almost a direct link:
AGW caused by cutting down the forests to make room for single genome export crops leaving no natural habitat for elephants or other indigenous creatures forcing them all into zoos where they must be fed and cared for by hoomans sometime resulting in exactly what is one film.
Only one dot away from the posted OP: having your head surrounded by an elephants ass providing $2 a day income is one of the best jobs available in Thailand as it comes with all the half digested straw you can eat.
Easy.
Perhaps, but the critters aren’t doing a District-9 because of AGW but rather deforestation.
Yes, yes. The relationship is concomitant not casual.
Let’s see… you asked for……….”AGW causality to an elephant’s puckering butt-hole” ///// Hmmm….. still depends on where you put the emPHAsis? Causation if focus on the Anthropomorphic part, concomitant if you focus on the Global Warming part.
Most things are like that….. and amusingly, although not overly, while YOU and the Elephant are ruminating, depends would have helped our poor wage slave at issue.
I crack myself up……. just not enough beer.
And yet, you do supply a sort of corollary in that deforestation probably contributes to AGW , notwithstanding CO2.
IDK, maybe if it was not so hot then the pachyderm pucker would not have occured with such vehemance when that lady squirt him with the cool water. Evidence of some warming, perhaps?
P.S.
Elephants are non-ruminatory.
http://merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vehemence?ref=dictionary&word=pachyderm#
Yes, yes. (Ha!) but “in context” the Elephant ruminates in the SAME WAY THAT YOU DO. I’ll let you further chew your cud (sic!) and contemplate why your make demands on the elephant that you don’t apply to yourself.
I’m starting to think you might be a speciesist!!
…… does force me to udder that intellect in its best form is not to nit pick the the gracious offering of those supplicant to you, but rather to find the common joy that brings happiness to us all?
…… or….. that could just be a big pile of crap.
I could have external mechanical digestors just ruminanting away in my spare time.
“speciesist” good play off *specious*.
There is an “elephant in the room” crack to be explored here but the more I plunge into it the more the task eludes me, for now.
I keep trying to anthropomorphize the dang room, for some reason. Hmm. Rume in the elephant?? Blaaaa!!! Mee what I sean?
Rume is not a word. I point that out only as it is on point. Room could work. Ruin could work. Ramen could work. Rune starts to wander. All depends on what you want to say. What clever connection is there to link?? “Elephant in the Room.” Yes, one person certainly wasn’t avoiding that issue.
The man in the elephant in the room. One had it, the other did not.
Again with the speciesisms! Obviously, that little vid brings forth notions not of any anthropormorphism but rather of elephantisms. Something from Dali.. although he favored Giraffes even while not sticking his own neck out.
From what position would you rather contemplate the nature of reality by feeling the beast in front of you? From a dark room or cave, or from so much closer more intimate a position…. like the end stage of rumination? Still dark, but no room at all.
YOU KNOW…… if you can’t be happy with a video of some other guy getting sat on by an elephant… you are just too high maintenance.
Sante!
What serendipidy that such whimsical jesting might swing all the way back around to stumbling across this:
Last year in Los Angeles the graffiti artist Banksy scrawled “THIS LOOKS A BIT LIKE AN ELEPHANT” on a worthless water tank and turned it into a priceless work of art. Those in the know rose in unison to salute the artist’s latest comment on homelessness – the metaphorical “elephant” in the room. An inevitable land grab subsequently followed and the water tank was taken away.
But someone had been living there. For seventeen years. And in a cruelly ironic twist of fate this man was now homeless. Because of Banksy. Or so the story goes.
The Room in the Elephant
http://playpiepint.com/?p=4574
Switching the artistic canvas, we have “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.” Talk about your suffocating corporate environment!
For some reason, the elephant did not get credit in this trailer.
http://imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2087913241/
The Gray Flannel Suit in the Man — A short treatise on synthetic vs. non-synthetic potential for induced pneumogastric spasticity in Micheal Moore.
Hey, publish or perish, right?
>but “society” won’t allow you to stand under a tree at night, much less use a cardboard box.
Or work for the amount that people are willing to pay you.
Thats an excellent point Mickey. I wonder while the very same words apply if we are thinking the very same conclusions?
Somewhat like describing the Marxian race to the bottom in Darwinian fashion. YOU enjoying the carnage by the unblinking assumption that you would be a winner in that process. ME concerned about how to structure the contest so there are as many winners as possible. All the words apply, but the conclusions are different.
Amusing?
“… pay someone to mow your lawn….”
LAWN?!?!? Are you nuts? Who can afford a lawn with only a McJob?
>I see more and more articles about criminalizing being poor.
CBO estimates millions of people making below 30K will be paying the fines for not having health insurance.
Sorry, the ‘tax penalty’
You’re RIGHT!!! Should make the employers pay for it and fine them in the absence of getting on with the exchanges.
I challenge you Mikey to tell the truth: How many times have you read that these fines won’t even be asked for the first few years?
Use whole numbers.
Be honest, no peeking. Is zero a whole number?
Zero is not a number. (That’s why division be zero is not defined.)
Not even in the decimal system which uses zero (called “thero” in Spanish, transliterated from the Arabic,) as a place holder.
“is not defined”…
At this, I must question. Infinity is a well-defined mathmatical point in the polar coordinate system
Imagine a 2-d being mapping a 3-d geoid. As he goes up the lattitudes, then that north pole tangential is infinity.
Now I understand why he thinks there are 12,400 billionaires in America.
Hey, pedro:
Nature by Numbers
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kkGeOWYOFoA
If it is an unlivable wage, why aren’t McDonalds workers dropping dead? As Lester would say, Where are the bodies?