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Corp profits have increased while costs have also increased, so the same dollars in 1990 buy less things now.

Guess you’ve never heard of inflation. Minimum wage in the 1950s would be something like $27 today- and that’s just simple annual inflation not accounting for buying power of the dollar. Factor that in and it’s more like $35. That’s a far fucking cry from $7.50. Plus, that guy in the 50s had only high school education, a stay at home wife, two kids, and a house.

Single family homes in my area start at $650k and go well over a million regularly. Town houses can be a 500k easy. Rent for a small apartment can be $1500+ a month plus utilities. People struggle on $70k salary here, which is about $35 an hour. Now imagine making under $10.

Another example, public school teachers start work making less than $60k. Imagine starting work with $50k-70k in student loans, some of them predatory private loans, spending nearly 50% of your post tax income on rent and then still having to pay for food, gas, car payment, insurance, and making those minimum loan payments basically forever. You’re pretty much financially crippled for life unless you marry someone that makes money or switch careers. That’s fucked up- someone that works as hard as our teachers, with their master’s level educations and endless night and weekend work should have to have 3 room mates for 20 years just trying to survive.

If the only thing we had was proper minimum wage adjustment and nothing else, society would be in a much better place. If we also had subsidized child care for working families, healthcare, non predatory education and insurance than imagine how much better off we’d all be.

But naw dawg, let’s just make some lazy Starbucks drinking kids get 4 fucking jobs to try and keep your old ass in social security.