Could You Survive Being Paid Minimum Wage?

The federal minimum wage is at only $5.85 an hour, according to the Department of Labor Web site. So, a person working 40 hours a week would make -- before taxes -- $234.00 a week. Now imagine that check after taxes are taken out. If they would bring home $200.00 a week, they would be lucky. What could you do with $200.00 a week to survive? Then imagine you had children to support with that wage. It would be hard enough to support yourself let alone a family.

If you were making minimum wage, you would probably be eligible for food stamps and government assistance, but then they would reduce the amount of assistance that you would get because you are working. So the minimum wage employee would suffer.

If you were making minimum wage and the employer offered you health care benefits that you had to pay some of your own money for every pay, you probably wouldn't be able to afford health care insurance at all, for you or your family, so you would go without insurance and hope no one in your family gets sick, because you wouldn't be able to take them to the doctor or lose time from work.

At minimum wage, if you were sick one day you would be short that pay, but it would affect you more than if you were making more than minimum wage. While the amount you would be short would only be $46.80 that would be a huge bite out of your paycheck. Most people spend that a week in just eating out at fast food restaurants.

With minimum wage you would be limited to what you could afford to eat every week. It wouldn't be an option of packing your lunch or going out to dinner with your coworkers, you would have no choice but to bring your lunch. With a gallon of milk being around $5.15 for that gallon, you would have to work 52 minutes for one gallon of milk. Then you would have to go through the store and find something to go with the milk so that you can make a meal out of it. Imagine milk being a luxury item at the grocery store. People on minimum wage would have to eat the cheapest they could to stretch the food budget for the week. This is not the most nutritious foods.

What if they drove to work for this minimum wage job? It would be a struggle to keep gas in a car with the gas prices going up all the time. Then try to think of adding in maintenance for the vehicle, and insurance costs.

The Federal minimum wages are scheduled to increase over the next few years, but its not going to keep pace with the increase in consumer goods cost increases.