Calculating the basic needs of a single parent with two children and seeing how it matched up to a fulltime minimum wage job was very sad.  Looking at the areas of rent, utilities, transportation, clothing, child care, furniture, laundry, cleaning supplies, communication, medical, and entertainment was very eye opening because the two do not match up.  Living off of basic necessities for a parent and her two children costs more than the income of a full time minimum wage worker.  This explains the problem our people are having making it through the month.  It isn’t possible to have a comfortable life when working full-time at any location with minimum wage as the income.  So, these are full time workers, going in 5 days a week, yet they still have to go to food banks and shelters in order to provide their children a decent life.  The question is how do we fix this problem? How are we supposed to help people get out of poverty when even working full time jobs leaves them with basic needs unmet?  This doesn’t even begin to address the problem of people working part-time because they cannot find full time jobs.  A common response would be, well she or he should not have had children, but that is not a justifiable answer because there are too many single parents in this dilemma right now.  People have had children and they are now stuck, with no way to get out.