Are teenagers and entry level workers supposed to make enough to raise a family?
No, it's so work your way up via experience or education.
Hike the minimum wage and employers hire FEWER employees.
(Also see: Oregon's unemployment rate)
Why not raise it to $50 an hour? Or $100?
My raises the past 2 years (with 15 years in my field) have been around 4 Tootsie rolls an hour, so they can suck it.

Is it really that obscene that one full-time minimum wage salary isn't enough to comfortably raise a family on? Are there other countries where that IS the case?

I'm no trickle-down economist, but ask any small business owner who pays minimum wage (payroll being by far the highest expense for most of them), and they will tell you the same as D just did: too frequent minimum wage hikes result in LESS jobs, and that extra few nickels isn't really helping the poor workers left standing that much anyway.

Ask Steve why your interns are unpaid, why you're paid what you are, what the Merc actually pays for the benefits you receive (if you are lucky enough to receive benefits) and why you can't afford copy editing, and you'll start to get a good idea of just how expensive employees are, and how razor thin I imagine your paper's margins are these days. Next, ask what would happen if every intern had to get minimum wage plus four dollars an hour, and if every paid employee got a two dollar an hour raise.

D, if you haven't gotten a raise in two years, maybe it's because you spend so much time commenting on the Mercury's Blog instead of actually working.

Well, yes, that's pretty obvious, but it's so worth it.