surviving on $2.65 an hour?

I was recently perusing the local newspaper when I noticed a help wanted advertisement offering a "competitive" $7 an hour starting wage. Is that really competitive? With what? Illegal employment perhaps? "Perhaps it is competitive with the minimum wage," I found myself wondering. But are minimum wage rates still that low? I seem to remember them being somewhere in the $5 when I was a kid. Could they have only gone up a dollar or so over the last couple of decades?

I went ahead and did some quick searching, and came across this site from the US Department of Labor that details the minimum wage for each state. My assumption that the minimum is about $1 less than the advertised "competitive" wage was correct, as the minimum wage in Arkansas is about $6.25. I can't imagine trying to make a living off of such a ridiculously low amount of money these days. But when you look at the larger picture, Arkansas actually doesn't have it so bad.

If I lived in Kansas, I could be earning a whopping $2.65 an hour under their current minimum wage law. WOW! You're probably wondering if I typed that right. Well, let me assure you that I did. They actually expect laborers to survive by earning less than $3 an hour. Pretty sad, and it maybe one of the reasons why Kansas is best known for being one of those states with hundreds of miles of nothingness.

Some may also point at Louisiana, where they don't even have a minimum wage law. But in reality, this probably works out well in some cases, as the market would set the acceptable rate. At least the state didn't give its seal of approval on a wage rate that won't even buy you a lunch at Taco Bell.