[bifrost]

My power bill is around $40/month for my house, I work at home most of the time and I live in San Francisco. Tack in about $60-70/mo in the winter when I run the heater (gas). I am also educated enough to put on a sweater instead of running the heater :)

That said, I think the budget is pretty skewed as well, and assumes a few things that I propose are incorrect. For starters, having a car payment (or really a car at all) is an incredibly bad idea. I'd also posit that living in a non-shared situation is also un-ideal. I'd also suggest that if you're not making enough money, you shouldn't have a cellphone nor cable TV, but I suppose you could qualify for the infamous "Obamaphone". IMHO you could cut $600/mo off that spend then tack on $40/mo for a bus pass, tack on $80/mo for a reasonable healthcare bill, $30/mo for some cheap DSL or even dialup so you're not totally off the grid. That leaves you with $450 and only working the MCDs job.

This obviously isn't to say it'd be a marvellous life, but its not working two jobs/etc.

I think the other disconnect is that people expect a "job" to be a "career" as well, and IMHO thats just wrong in this situation. Someone who's working a min-wage job is either just getting into the workforce (as a teenager or something) or someone who can't get anything else. The someone who can't get anything else, I don't know what to do about that, but its not the problem of wage payers to help them out.