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Too bad people have forgotten that the minimum wage was never intended to support a family of four.

Years ago (more than I care to remember) I had a management gig at a minimum-wage establishment. Our HQ sent out some HR hotshot to speak to our employees in an effort to head off any unionization attempts. Part of his spiel was that these jobs "were never intended to support a family, merely to provide additional income to housewives and students".

I looked around the room and noted that 80% of our staff consisted of single mothers who were relying on this job to a large degree to support their families.

After my "don't these guys from headquarters do any research before they fly out here and shoot their mouths off?" tantrum I realized that he was not necessarily wrong so much as society was changing at breakneck speed, and the model on which we had been based was rapidly falling by the wayside.

All those trends greatly accelerated in the years since IMO.