So, what's changed?

When I was 15 years old I got my first job where I actually got a paycheck.  I was paid the then minimum wage of 40 cents an hour.  Previously, I had worked only at miscellaneous jobs where I was paid the full amount.  I was shocked when I received my first weekly paycheck.  It was not the full amount.  I had worked 40 hours at 40 cents an hour and expected my check to be $16.00.  But, much to my chagrin it was something less.  My first experience with income tax and FICA deductions.

At the time gasoline was 20 cents (actually 19.9) a gallon.  I had to work an hour to buy two gallons of gasoline.  Today, the minimum wage is $7.25.  A gallon of gasoline is about $3.50 a gallon.  A person working at the minimum wage has to work an hour to buy two gallons of gasoline.

So, what has changed?  INFLATION.

Our government continues to print money to pay its ever increasing insatiable diet for spending for ever increasing social programs for ever increasing numbers of people on government dependency.  We are now $17 trillion in debt and digging a deeper hole by the day.  What will the minimum wage be 50 years from now and what will a gallon of gasoline cost?   I shudder to think.