We recently had a black reporter for the local paper do a story on living on food stamps.
[shockingly] His conclusion was that he could eat really well, and likely was more healthy after a month on the regimen because it forced him to shop and cook wisely.
He even mentioned that most food stamp recipients are deficient in knowledge in shopping wisely and cooking.
It's worth mentioning that I wasn't very sympathetic, since their monthly budget on minimum wage was exactly - to the dollar - the same amount as Mrs WBill's and my budget at the time. And we had a couple of cars, a house payment, and were socking the unbudgeted balance of our paychecks away with both fists. But I digress....
Both the producer and his wife ran into a major problem - finding a minimum wage job. Not the "job" part, specifically. They found a number of those. No, the problem was that since they were moderately clean cut, showed up to work on time, etc etc etc....their employers kept wanting to give them raises.
That didn't fit their desired story about how hard it was to get by and how the man was keeping people down. Ooops.
The first few days were pretty boring. Video of them riding a bus (the horror!!!!) to work. Needing to show up on time (!!!!!) and having an uncomprimising boss (no!!!). Having to shop carefully (shock!!) and use coupons (unbelievable!!!) to save money at the grocery store. Mrs WBill, who is more softhearted than I, even said: "What is this crap? Looks like an average day in my life!".
Finally, the filmmaker resorted to some gimmicks. He got a lousy apartment in an unsafe area of town. He "got hurt" on the job and needed medical attention. A few other things, all ridiculously staged, all designed to bring the story back around to the desired outcome.
My takeaway was that, while living on minimum wage was not easy, it was do-able. And, most important, what was hard was *staying* at minimum wage. With some work and some attention to detail, it was easy to move up quickly.