this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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Meanwhile the same job 70 years ago paid the equivalent of $34 plus benefits
The minimum wage in the US has never been higher than about $12 in today's dollars.
And the workers weren’t all paid minimum wages at the time.
you could go to college on a part time job and have no debt.
Also no health insurance, no IRA, eat only rice and beans/ramen, live in a small studio with a roommate, can't afford anything new and salvaging from flea markets and thrift stores... And the college is community college with lots of grants from the government.
So you're saying live extremely frugal and struggling?
That had nothing to do with the minimum wage (which has been lower than $15 of today's dollars since inception), but because of how much cheaper college was back then.
"Its not about pay, its just about how more affordable things were for the pay you earned back then!"
College tuition has massively outpaced inflation, much less wage growth.
The policies (chiefly the change that made student loans no longer dischargeable in bankruptcy) that rocketed college tuition up are a MUCH more significant factor in college affordability, that's just a fact.
When everything outpaces inflation, maybe we compute inflation wrong.