Spoilers: I live in Germany, not the US.

Is minimum wage being rent for a 2br/1ba actually the goal? Why?

I would argue, if you are single, then minimum wage should be enough so that you could afford to live close to where you work in a 1 bedroom apartment. And live comfortably - so that by the end of the month, you don't have to count the change in your pocket. So that you can afford a healthy diet. Some socialising activities. Putting back something for the future.

If you have a kid, it should be enough to afford a two bedroom apartment, whilst you and your kid live comfortably. If you are a couple, one income should still be enough to afford that. If you have x kids, it should be enough to afford an x+1 bedroom apartment.

Why? Because no matter what you work, whether you are in service or fast food or in finance, you still put a significant amount of your daily time doing something you would not do for the sake of it. If you work full time (however this might be defined), no matter what you do, you contribute these hours to society, and this makes you deserving of a life worth living. And especially your kids. Your kids are kids and they have no control in what you work and what family they are born into. But they absolutely deserve to live a livable life. We all do. No matter what we do.

And we cannot all be finance attorneys. I'm not even going to start with the obvious aspects like necessary service work, nurses and other essential workers being underpaid, inequality and inequity, chances etc. I'll just ask this - if a person is really simply not smart enough, if they don't have what it takes to be successful, be it low IQ or mental problems or lack of qualities or whatever - are they not deserving of a life worth living? Why are we even debating this? Should you not be paid proportionally to the time you put in rather than to how much luck you had in Life Lottery?

I mean, I'm not necessarily an advocate of big apartments, let alone houses. I don't really get the idea of every kid needing a room of their own. But as for now, this seems what society deems appropriate (here, you get problems with CPS if brother and sister of a certain age share a bedroom). Therefore, this should be made available - for everyone to the degree that is necessary and appropriate. (I also think sharing an apartment when you are single is a great thing actually, ecologically and socially - but that's not the majority's opinion so nevermind.) This seems to only work if we decouple the idea of income from daily necessities and expenses such as housing and food, but maybe others have better ideas.

It seems grotesque and absurd that a society would allow the question of whether or not to have kids - or how many kids to have - to become an economic one. Like, even for the most greedy capitalist assholes, what exactly is the plan when cheap labor cannot afford to have kids that will then provide cheap labor?

More of a sidenote:

I assume the idea is to be able to support a family and the sad logic that it often comes out "cheaper" to have one parent work and one stay at home rather than try to afford daycare.

It is a sad logic only in the fact that you cannot choose. Where I live it is definitely not cheaper to stay at home. Being able to truly choose whether you want to work or raise your kid yourself (up to a certain age) or a combination of whatever percentage would be freedom. Being financially obliged to do either is shit.

If you stay at home with a baby or a toddler, you are putting less burden on an overloaded childcare system, and you are raising future adults to be healthy, happy, and, from an economic perspective, functioning. You are not exactly having a lot of free time. It is enjoyable and fullfilling but not for everyone (which is why outsourcing a part of it if you don't want to do it 100% is great). You got to be able to handle tantrums and lose your autonomy and perform understimulating activities a lot. Being a stay at home parent, at least for little kids, is not easy. Hell you can't even take a pee break unless they allow it (and when they allow it). You don't have holidays or weekends or nights off. I can't believe this kind of care work is still not financially compensated. And I can't believe that people who want to do that, who want to have kids and stay at home with them and raise them for their first years, just have to pass on all of this because of money.