How would you define a "living wage"?

All good points. Society can't account for all emergencies or events like illness or accidents. But we should provide a starting point in society at the lowest fundamental and basic level, food and shelter. Healthcare and other forms of insurance as safety nets will be debated continuously as either individual or societal responsibilities. I once told a soldier when I was his commander that BAH is for you to provide a reasonable lifestyle for your family not to buy a fancy car, the latest game system or fancy stereo system for your car. Like you said individual responsibility means having reasonable expectations for living in your environment. But society should have a responsibility for ensuring fairness not welfare but reasonable wages with any job to reduce dependency on public assistance.

MAJ James Woods - Why? How many times must we see the failure of attempts for society (and its agent, government) to make decisions for people and insure their sustenance? We don't even have to look across the seas or to our neighbors to the south. We have seen such failures in such places as the colony at Plymouth. All government can do is provide for a level playing field through equitable application of the law. Period. As soon as society/government takes responsibility for insuring reasonable wages, we end up with dependency on public assistance. This is an absolute truth demonstrated countless times in every instance where it has been tried.

CPT Jack Durish - With every story of failure there's a story of success. I would call BAH/BAS/COLA as government taking responsibility to provide reasonable pay to government and military personnel; otherwise, the argument would be to eliminate all three programs, pay personnel the base salary and tell them to be responsible. All I'm saying instead of a government supporting a single standard for federal minimum wage the program could be based on locality where the states provide input and businesses either support it or they don't. As opposed to continuing the status quo of having full time employees under the poverty line depending on public assistance. We need to crack that code.

MAJ James Woods - The military argument falls apart because we are not at liberty to negotiate our salaries, which is why many skilled individuals leave early in their military service. You cannot use the military as a good example for government set wages, the simple fact that the superstars get paid as much as the malingerers is a mindblowing fact in our day to day lives.
The government is simply too inefficient to run a program like this responsibly, then mix in the special interest groups lobbying their representative for pay hikes in their areas in exchange for campaign contributions and you have a veritable train wreck. Heck I'd pay good money to lobby for my competitor's wages to be increased that would be great for any business I owned.

And I realize that unemployment is at an all time low, but I still don’t think they’re counting those that are under employed.

MSgt David Hoffman - You're using the typical anti-Obamacare attack ad line. Well before the ACA, they could compete across state lines and we didn't see significant impact on healthcare costs because of that allowed competition. Yes the ACA had provisions that limited it's effectiveness and we can argue back in forth whether it was the GOP or the Dems in Congress that supported those provisions like allowing across state line exchanges. But if that truly was the issue that caused high costs then instead of 7 years of repeal attempts we would've seen a Congress vote on an amendment to the law allowing for exchanges to compete across state lines especially for the mostly rural states.
Back to my original point, healthcare in general has become a for profit business where corporations run hospitals and some hospitals have mandatory rotations of patients through all their doctors as opposed allowing doctors develop a rapport and consistency with their patients. Healthcare is a business, not a public service; profit margins are important; they are on record admitting to inflating costs knowing insurances will not pay much (a percentage) in return or for double billing. Healthcare is so random and expensive regardless of insurance that I would not use it as criteria for determining a living wage.

MSgt David Hoffman - Unless you're about to tell me that healthcare insurers were not allowed to sell across state lines before the ACA and that is why costs were so high in many states, I don't know how you can accuse me of using an attack ad line when I'm stating facts. Just like the fact that bipartisan provisions in the ACA in order to get GOP support can be seen as limitations on the effectiveness of the ACA. Just like the notion of the exchanges should be allowed to sell across state lines was a bipartisan issue then why didn't we see a GOP controlled Congress push for that measure as a partial fix to the healthcare law?
I suggest you spare me the "I'm a Christian and Obama supporter" lines and have a rationale conversation based on facts or personal experiences that support your argument. An ER charged my insurance over $2K just to check her temperature and conduct tests on her urine in response to us seeking their help when our daughter's temp spiked to 104 regardless of the doses of Tylenol and Ibuprofen over a span of 12 hours. Or the $250 charge from a hospital labeled as "doctor's review of patient records" when my wife gave birth. That is why I call hospitals "for profit" businesses. Different hospitals by the way.

MSgt David Hoffman - My bad. You said as a Christian you supported his presidency. I've shared facts and opinion based on informed experience to support my stance on the subject and to challenge one of your statements. If you can't appreciate that and respond in kind then just don't respond.