"Genuine question, how does one get by on $13 an hour?"

By making the worker subsidize their income from other sources.

NOBODY gets by on $13/hr.

But, like Q says in her comment below, when she splits the rent/utilities, healthcare covered under her parents plan, and phone covered under her parents plan, then she can totally live off of $13 an hour!

Phone $80/mo. Healthcare $250/mo. Rent $400/mo (just picking a number at random. insert whatever number you want, or is appropriate for your area, from $300-$2000/mo.). Utilities at probably $100/mo.

So she is being "subsidized" $830/mo. That's how she can live on $13/hr.

No shade to Q, of course. This is totally common.

But when you back up and look at the big picture of how communities work, how taxes work, and how businesses work, you realize that everyone in Q's life is PAYING HER EMPLOYER for the privilege of employing her for $13/hr, rather than her employer just paying her a living wage.

"But I can't afford to pay my receptionist $25/hr!" the business owner cries!

Then you don't have a viable business, sir. It's as simple as that. If you can't pay a living wage to each of your employees, without accepting handouts from your employee's families, or getting tax cuts from the local municipalities, then YOU DON'T HAVE A VIABLE BUSINESS.

Period.

That company will fail, because it has failed to adequately calculate their cost of operations, which only ever go UP. And if you have a hidden number in the cost calculations of your budget that keeps going up forever... you will fail. Eventually.

This is why businesses are complaining they can't hire anybody... the working class have found out they were being cheated, and inadvertently subsidizing their shitty employers' business plan, and aren't having it anymore.

And there are literally dozens of famous successful businesses that operate with integrity and pay people properly, while still providing excellent products at a competitive price. Dick's Drive-In and Gravity Payments are just two of them, employing different methods to achieve the same result.