You keep saying "no one can live on minimum wage". I've proven it's possible to do so in my area. You can change the goal posts, but it doesn't kill my argument. I used a specific scenario to show exactly why it IS possible in my area to live on minimum wage, and HOW it would be possible to do so.
Minimum wage isn't designed nor intended for anybody anywhere to live comfortably. It's a wage floor designed so that MOST WORKERS can live comfortably. Most minimum wage jobs require very few expensive or hard-to-acquire skills, can be taught "on the job", and present little liability. They are jobs that can be easily filled and often have incredibly high turn over rates. In other words, they are not jobs designed for skilled, capable adults to fill long-term as a means of achieving some abstract financial solvency goal.
As others in this thread have said: If you want to earn more than minimum wage, make yourself worth more than minimum wage by acquiring skills and developing your abilities.
I began working in 2002 as a carphop at Sonic making $5.15/hour, 15 hours a week. Without a college education, without a network of "good buddy" types helping me advance, without a hand out I'm now the manager of my department, making almost 10x the yearly salary I averaged at Sonic. I did it through hard work, reliability, and learning.
I've lived on my own since I was 19. I've never (as an adult) taken any kind of government aid except my education grants, which I earn through maintaining a high GPA (I'm required to keep a 3.6 average GPA to keep my aid).
On the other hand, I have a friend in his 40s who works for Dominos delivering pizzas. In fact, he's never had a job much above that level. He's very smart, very capable, and has tons of marketable skills..but he's never cared enough about career success to apply himself to finding a higher paying job. Why the hell should I subsidize him? He made his choice. There's absolutely nothing holding him back except himself. You can't even blame it on the economy, because he's 40...he's been doing this since he was 16. He's ALWAYS sought easy, low-responsibility employment.