It's helpful to separate the discussion of posts vs comments....So to say that a post needs at least .05 to payout seem reasonable to me.

Very reasonable suggestion!

The vast majority of comments on my posts get only my upvote. And I don't want to have to use a 100% weight upvote on every comment just to get the person paid something, which is about what I'd need to do given my current SP to meet even a .10 threshold.

Yes, I understand the thought here too and it is very true. Reaching that 0.10 threshold on comments for many users, especially for newbies, is extremely difficult.