The reason conservatives want very very low wages is so that high school
students can work at minimum wages at grocery stores after school,
packing bags for customers, so that they
can use this money to pay for college. In 1963, this was the job I got.
The wage was $1.50 per hour. OK, let’s take a look at how this works.
Based on the Consumer Price Index, a figure that has been artificially
jockeyed around to hide real inflation, now more heavily based on
collapsed housing prices, rather than consume goods, I was making, by
today’s standards, $12.50 per hour. There were millions of these jobs
available for students who, if they stayed in retail, enjoyed a standard
wage of about $2.20 or higher, around $18 per hour by today’s
standards.
