In my post the other day, I thought my readers would catch the sleight of hand. The person who made that meme is manipulating you, and I thought it was obvious. The person who made it is playing games with conversion math. They are converting from dollars to PMs, then claiming this as the basis of a ‘study’ finding that a person making minimum wage in 1970 has a lifestyle the same as someone making $100,000 per year today.
A person in 1970 making minimum wage most certainly didn’t live the same lifestyle of someone making minimum wage today. In 1972, my father moved to Orlando to be an engineer for Hewlett Packard. He was making $6500 a year, which was double the minimum wage. I was a young child then, and we lived in that apartment until I was in middle school. We weren’t wealthy by any means. The apartment we lived in was an 850 square foot, 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment that was built in 1969 and is still there, but was converted into a condo at some point. I was just looking at it online, and Zillow places it at $91k.
It was in South Orlando, and the area was mostly families working at nearby Martin Marietta back then. It’s a relatively high crime area now. The point is, my father was making a bit under the median salary back then, and we didn’t have anything close to a $100k lifestyle.
The study and meme are being circulated by those commies in the Democrat party to make you hate “capitalism” so they can usher in their Marxist Utopia.
Don’t fall for that shit. It’s propaganda.
6 Comments
ghostsniper · August 5, 2026 at 8:48 am
I don’t think I became aware of this thing called “minimum wage” until the 80’s and by then I had had about 30 jobs. In 1970, at age 15, I was working at the only McDonald’s in Lee County, FL (Fort Myers), making $1.25 an hour and was glad to have it. It sure beat mowing lawns in the blazing sun for $3.00 each.
Note that I was 15, the very reason for the minimum wage, so that amount of money was the FIRST rung on the ladder of upward mobility – NOT a living wage. I still lived at home and was not driving yet. With my very first paycheck I bought a Lloyd’s am-fm cassette player and a Creedence Clearwater tape. THAT is what entry level kids do with entry level pay.
There is absolutely no reason for a person in their 20’s to be pissing and moaning about earning a “minimum wage” and that it is NOT a living wage. Their circumstance is entirely their fault.
3 years later, at age 18, I was working as a mason’s tender on high rise construction projects at $4.50 an hour (3 times what I made at McD’s) and I was paying for my 66 Mustang and all the associated costs and $25/wk to my dad for rent and board as he called it – to teach me how to manage my money.
Anybody in this country that complains about the amount of money they earn can take it down the road because it falls on deaf ears here on the Ghost Compound. I walk the talk and I wrote the book.
chiefjaybob · August 5, 2026 at 9:00 am
I caught it, but left it alone, because the minimum wage arguments are all very stupid. Minimum wage is not, and never was supposed to be wage to live a life on. It’s called entry level for a reason. If you’re making minimum wage, no, you can’t afford an appartment (by yourself). You can’t buy a new car (by yourself). You get a roommate. You drive a beater. If you don’t like that, a person does what you did, DM: you improve your skillset to improve your worth. We don’t suffer from a wage problem in this country; we suffer from a laziness problem.
Tsgt Joe · August 5, 2026 at 11:10 am
I made E-4 in 1970 which was a little better than minimum wage, I had a kid and pregnant wife, we lived poor. It was nowhere near what a 100k would be today.
GrayDog · August 5, 2026 at 1:04 pm
As someone who was self employed for most of my adult life, I can say with certainty that minimum wage is actually $0. On the occasion that my hopeful low bid proved to be too low, my minimum wage turned out to be less than zero. Because I was raised to believe that a man’s word is his bond. Notably, .gov’s “share” of my efforts has never been zero. “Minimum wage” laws are for losers who have no work ethic. And polititions who need votes from the feeble-minded.
SiG · August 5, 2026 at 2:25 pm
In addition to what chiefjaybob and ghostsniper said, I didn’t react because it’s old hat to me.
Been a “real money” guy and anti-Fed since around Y2K. Been tracking (and plotting – engineer, after all) precious metal prices since then, too. When they removed the gold standard they also removed pretty much all meaning in that comparison. The spot silver a few hours ago was $62.59, so a 1964 dime was worth $4.53. A few days ago, silver was $58 so that same dime was worth $4.20. The connection between min wage and that price is very approximate. Factors like having something built for near slave labor prices in Bumfuqlandia or on the most automated robot assembly lines means more than the silver gyrations. Comparing the standard of living to the price of a commodity is pretty meaningless.
WallPhone · August 6, 2026 at 4:41 pm
I take the “we don’t need minimum wage” line in the meme literally, plus that labor market wages, especially for the middle classes, are the least responsive to inflation–often taking years to reach the “fair market” equilibrium that the inflation destabilized.
You’re absolutely correct that you can’t compare a 1960 standard of living to today’s, they might as well be different planets.
Inflationary money policy is literally a tax on holding liquid assets. Maybe it made sense to encourage people to trust banks again after the Great Depression, but in modern times when people don’t even touch a paper check, it simply doesn’t encourage people to pull bills out of mattresses anymore.