Minimum wage and Gas a deal… when adjusted for inflation?
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006
You know how folks like John Stossel on ABCNews like to tout that Gas is a real bargin, when adjusted for inflation, in fact he claims it’s cheap! You know, that’s a real misconception. Maybe that’s the case, theoretically, however when you look at Minimum wage when adjusted for inflation, you can see that your dollars can’t buy the same amount of things as you could way back when. Look at this website: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html You can see that the minimum wage worker continues to see a reduction of real dollars when adjusted for inflation, and that converts into reduced buying power at the pump.
Mr. Stossel points out that ice cream, milk, water and other stuff costs way more than gas. First off, we don’t buy milk and ice cream at 20 or 30 gallons at a shot and need to fill up 4 to 6 times a month. Spending $1 for a quart of water is silly, since it doesn’t cost that much out of the tap, and you can filter it much cheaper yourself, if you feel the need.
The bottom line is that if minimum wage earners don’t see rises in their paycheck, what’s the incentive or chances that otehr industries will follow at a rate that will beat inflation?
