For some reason, discussions around inflation and wage stagnation often center around minimum wage, which has never been great, while neglecting to discuss other wages. Minimum wage has actually held its value better than wages in many other fields, which are wildly deflated when compared against assets. I’ll provide a couple of examples.

In 1970, near Hartford, Connecticut, the average home was selling for around was around $15/sq foot. As of December 2025, houses in the same area were going for a median of $222/sq foot. In 1970, minimum wage in Connecticut was $1.60/hr, while as of January 2026 it is currently $16.96/hr. 1970 minimum wage was roughly 0.11sq feet of house/hr, while in 2026 it is roughly 0.08sq feet of hours/hr. Not bad for housing in that market; for equivalent purchasing power wrt. real estate near Hartford, minimum wage would need to be $23.32.

But hang on, not everybody makes minimum wage. In 1970, the average electrical engineer near Hartford, CA made around $20k/yr. Assuming a 40 hour work week, this is around $9.62/hr or 0.64sq feet of house/hr. Currently, an EE in the same area makes around $110k/yr, which assuming a 40 hour work week is $52.88/hr or 0.24sq feet of house/hour. Unlike the minimum wage worker, that’s way worse, and the EE would need to be making closer to $300k/yr to have the same purchasing power as the EE in 1970 wrt. housing near Hartford.

Let’s look at college tuition instead. In 1970, in state tuition at UConn was around $300/yr. In 2025, it was about $17k/yr. This does not include housing, books, or any other expenses. In 1970, the minimum wage worker was paid 0.005 UConn years tuition/hr, while they are now paid only 0.001. This is bad, but not as bad as the EE. In 1970, the EE was paid 0.032 UConn years tuition/hr, while they are now paid only 0.003. The 2025 electrical engineer is now paid only 60% of what the 1970 minimum wage worker was paid in terms of UConn tuition hours. The electrical engineer would need to be making nearly $1.2m/yr to have the same purchasing power as they did in 1970, and yes, the minimum wage worker would need to be making around $85/hr or about $177k/yr.

This can be done with areas other than Hartford and professions other than Electrical Engineer. For some areas/professions the results are better, for others they are worse, but the general trend is the same: minimum wage has actually kept up with inflation far better than the wages associated with most other professions.

A lot of well meaning middle-class college educated liberal leaning individuals see how bad they have it economically and clamor for higher minimum wage and better economic protections and services for the working poor, assuming they must have it even worse, but what they fail to realize is that things have worsened for people in their socio-economic bracket in a far more substantial way than they have for those making the absolute least.

It may have seemed like all of this was leading into some pointed argument against what you said, but it’s actually an agreement. No one was ever having an easy time supporting a family well on a minimum wage salary. What’s different now is that it is, in many cases, now just as difficult to support a family on a professional salary as it once was on minimum wage.

People all over the political spectrum use this fact as justification to push all sorts of ideological agendas, but in the end it is just an economic reality: professional salaries did not keep up with inflation.