it's not supposed to be. Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be a sole source of income. I'm sorry, but someone with a job that requires little to no skill should not be paid as much as someone with a job that requires a college degree.
No one asked for everyone to have the same income. Just that everyone has
enough to get by. More skilled (and in some cases, luckier) workers will enjoy further luxuries.
Of course you're probably going to come back with "that's not fair" because some people are not presented with a good job, while others can access one quite easily. Well if you want everything to be "fair", maybe we should switch to communism, where everyone makes the same. Oh wait, you'll lose basic human rights in the process.
A few things to break up here...
You do not seem to understand
Marxism. Whether you agree with it or not, it's a pretty significant historical moment, and you should understand it in the wake of bringing it up.
We'll start at the end: Soviet Russia failed because it was a totalitarian regime whose government abused resources for military use, rather than for civilian use (i.e. guns vs. butter). They went wrong in a lot of ways, so they naturally failed. China failed on account of yet more government resource mismanagement coupled with a (yet again) totalitarian regime, this time dead-set on destroying thousands of years of cultural heritage. These aren't sustainable business models, but we're missing the best part: these aren't Marxist models either! How so? Marx defined a
classless, moneyless, and stateless society as the communist utopia. Were Soviet Russia and Communist China states? You bet. So are these the two communist behemoths that prove the inefficacy of an entire system? Heck no; they're not even real communists.
In any case, I'm sure if the United States instituted anarcho-capitalism alongside the totalitarian policies of the "Communist" states, we'd see the exact same results -- the issues that destroyed the USSR are not exclusive to "Communism," nor are they inherent to Marxism.
As for the loss of human rights under Marxism, um, no. Not really. The whole basis of Marxism is that the capitalist system is inherently exploitative. The owners of the means of production control all labor. If someone wants to work, they need permission from the factory owner or the field owner or what have you. Because of this barrier to work, the wealthy have leverage over the poor which can be exploited for the benefit of the wealthy class. Thus, as the cliche goes, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Marxism destroys this potential rights violation by enabling access to the means of production to everyone, equally. The workers own their factories. The rich landowner doesn't control the factory, and neither does the government. Things get done because people are naturally good, and they will provide for their fellow man as needed.
The other thing is that there's a logical leap here. A parallel conversation:
> My house is cold. I want better windows to keep it warm during the winter.
< Are you suggesting that you need a whole new house?
But the thing with waitressing is, it doesn't require that much skill at all. Sure, you have to be coordinated, but most people generally are. Think about it. If we raised minimum wage, we would have less doctors/lawyers etc, simply because people would just take the high paying minimum wage job flipping patties.
The biggest barrier to being a doctor or lawyer is the fact that the cost of education in this country is insane. Fix that, and people will go back to those jobs. A $10 minimum wage is not going to leave the medical field bereft of talent, especially when many people can't get into medical school.
EDIT: We can absolutely afford a minimum wage increase. Study:
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib341-raising-federal-minimum-wage/
Also, Costco pays I think a $10+ starting wage, and they have tidy profits on low-priced goods. No reason Wal-Mart or McDonalds can't afford that, especially at their scales.