Not disagreeing at all with you on minimum wage, you’re absolutely correct. These are average wages across the whole economy (or non supervisory wages or something but close enough). If you plotted real minimum wage vs where we used to be it’s waaaayyy lower now. It’s nowhere near kept up with increased cost of living.
If you’re interested in more on how the cpi works or what is or isn’t included and some of the arguments both ways, I found this to be an interesting read that summarizes a lot of the controversies about the cpi figures well.
I find that incredibly difficult to believe considering the minimum wage is hardly gone up. That my parents were able to afford a house, but I can’t.
Not disagreeing at all with you on minimum wage, you’re absolutely correct. These are average wages across the whole economy (or non supervisory wages or something but close enough). If you plotted real minimum wage vs where we used to be it’s waaaayyy lower now. It’s nowhere near kept up with increased cost of living.
If you’re interested in more on how the cpi works or what is or isn’t included and some of the arguments both ways, I found this to be an interesting read that summarizes a lot of the controversies about the cpi figures well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/technology/inflation-measure-cpi-accuracy.html
Or archive version https://archive.is/zvtPw
Though be aware that article is from a year and a half ago, so none of the inflation figures it gives in it are current.