Uh, how about getting the job skills that you need to earn the amount of money you want to bring home? Do you really think that you should be paid 100K a year to sweep floors and empty out trash cans? If you're not smart enough to deserve the kind of pay you want, then don't complain that there isn't someone stupid enough to hire you at that rate!! You see how this works here now? No? A higher level of skill will ALWAYS receive a higher level of pay! Now do you see this?
If the place you want to work at won't pay you what you think you're worth, then go and work at a place that DOES pay you what you're actually worth!

Randy

And if you need a tax break to survive as a business, you should close your doors and try something else.

It is not that most employers CANNOT AFFORD to pay a living wage, it is that they don't WANT to pay a living wage, because they want to maximise profits and treat themselves to a whole load of fringe benefits they can write off againt tax.
When I was general manager of a construction company my directors philosophy was
"no one is forcing people to work for minimum wage, if it was not enough for them, they would not be competing to have me pay it to them."
This unfortunately is the out of touch attitude many employers have adopted happily in a capitalist society, that is reliant on a desperate work force.

Very simalar to what FDR said when he signed the first minimum wage law.