needs to spend six months living on that minimum wage. Not a week, not a month, but six full months. Find an apartment. Figure out how you will get to work. Pay utilities. Buy groceries. Cook food. Purchase basic kitchen utensils on that minimum wage. No copping out, no getting help from others. Live on that minimum wage the full six months.
They'd last a week at best, and be scrambling to get away from this.
I have lived on minimum wage, but I was lucky enough to be a single person back when that minimum wage gave a sustainable life style. I'm talking 1966-67, when minimum wage was $1.60/hour. I was living in Tucson, AZ, a relatively low cost of living place to be. And even then, as a single person (I really want to reiterate that, that I wasn't trying to support anyone else) I was just barely making it. I could pay my rent and utilities. Buy basic groceries. An occasional new dress. At the time I rented a very small apartment and lived about three blocks from where I worked, meaning I didn't need a car. My income and expenses were almost perfectly equal. In some ways I was lucky that in earlier years, when I still lived at home, we were very poor and I learned how to make do on almost nothing.
That poverty mindset has lasted my entire life, and in many ways is helpful now. My current income is a bit below the national median. I live alone (divorced a while back and my son is grown and fully self-sufficient) and manage quite well on that income. But I recognize that others, especially those with children, have vastly higher expenses than I do. And they deserve support.
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