| Even on your parents insurance if you only had yourself it will eventually get very complicated. co-pays, out of network doctors taking care of you while you are under after a bout of appendicitis goes wrong, cars breaking down, parents randomly needing help to make ends meet because of all of the same. Speaking from 20+ years of adulthood nearly half of which was below the poverty line there are more poverty traps than you can possibly imagine that minimum wage or even much more doesn’t even come close to avoiding. The available recourses to you when those events occur are grim. Calculate the interest on payday loans, if you happen to need one it is exceedingly hard to stop needing them as they drive you down further and further. Life got considerably more stable after making programmer salaries. Minimum wage in the US is just waiting for the next big thing to push you further and further down. I was super lucky to find out I was good at this computer thing in my 20s (and that I had family to lend me 500 bucks for my very first and very bargain basement computer in that era). It felt close to indentured servitude other than I could change jobs, but I didn’t get ahead or even tread water. No vacations, no time off when sick, and 60-100 hours of work a week for years. I definitely would have preferred just getting a check from the government and going back to school while I got some real skills, or even that same minimum wage with a good transit network and medical care that didn’t find ways to take all my very limited savings. In the end, unless people have gone through the sort of nightmares life can throw you it is hard to see how much money you need in the states to be stable and it takes a lot of education and knowledge to navigate all of it, which if you are on minimum wage you probably don’t have. Something has gotta give the situation is not viable. |