a bowl of ramon noodles or a double cheese burger go for a 1 or sometimes less and if they eat 8 a day for 30 days that would be 240 and if they add prescription and others that would be 140 enough for some lousy form of medical coverage though the alt for the poor is medicare which is honestly as lousy as medical coverage goes also they have 150 a month for travel and if they take a bus bike or carpool you can probably cut back on that to about 100 so as long as the minimum wage worker set priorities they will get by also most jobs have minor raises after certain time periods or they could just search for a better job while still working at minimum wage the problem lies with the fact that many poor dont have high school degrees have kids , medical problems or are just lazy the lazy being the minority im assuming ether way any form of welfare should be done through private charities , families or churches