[bryanrasmussen]

>They also are not arbitrarily constrained to follow good budgeting guidelines which specify not more than 30% of income to housing.

poor people are not arbitrarily constrained to spend only 30% of their income for housing? Well that's true I guess, but I mean there's a reason why 30% is assumed as being good budgeting practice.

>the arrangement which I very comfortably made it through grad school in is apparently not possible.

yes, I think the arrangement I made it through on grad school would not be possible now that I am adult with a family. but sure if the conditions that held true for me then, age, no dependents, stayed true for all my life I could live as a poor person and only be a little bit desperate at times.

hey, did you ever like have a bad patch in grad school but think it's ok this is only for a few more years?

[bojangleslover]

>I am an adult with a family

Minimum wage is not meant to support a family

[Volundr]

"It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." - Franklin Roosevelt 1933

Personally I including having a family in a "decent living", and given the standards of the 1930s where women were generally expected to be homemakers I doubt Roosevelt intended this quote to suggest two working parents.

I realize that a segment of the population has been working to redefine the minimum wage and what it's for, telling us that it's for teenagers who don't need a living wage, but let's be clear: at it's inception minimum wage was supposed to provide a family a comfortable living.

[danaris]

Bullshit.

If that were true, it would be legally specified as "the minimum wage you can pay to someone without a family."

Minimum wage was always intended to be a living wage. It just hasn't kept pace with inflation for the last several decades.

There is absolutely nothing that makes it harder to pay someone with a family minimum wage, or easier for someone with a family to get a job with a better wage.

[bojangleslover]

That's because having a family is a choice, plain and simple, and this would incentivize having more kids to get paid more.

[bryanrasmussen]

also people who have families will never lose jobs and have to take minimum wage jobs, or condoms fail, or anything else inconvenient, so everybody better plan their lives well, because good planning keeps accidents from happening. Just look at any software development project!