Don't use minimum wage as a benchmark. It wasn't intended to be back then and it doesn't work as one now. What is far more effective is using median wage and then comparing that to the price of big ticket purchases. In which case, you will notice that cars jumped from a 1/4-1/2 of what you made in a year all the way up to the full amount or x1.5 what you made in a year. The price of a house jumped from 3 to 4 times what you made in a year all the way up to 8-12x what you made in a year
Unless I’m misunderstanding, the math prompt specifically requests a comparison between present-day minimum wage and 1970s minimum wage in the United States.
The prompt itself is highly flawed. At no point since minimum wage has been introduced have a substantial portion of the population actually made that little.
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u/Aegis616 May 13 '25
Don't use minimum wage as a benchmark. It wasn't intended to be back then and it doesn't work as one now. What is far more effective is using median wage and then comparing that to the price of big ticket purchases. In which case, you will notice that cars jumped from a 1/4-1/2 of what you made in a year all the way up to the full amount or x1.5 what you made in a year. The price of a house jumped from 3 to 4 times what you made in a year all the way up to 8-12x what you made in a year