Just went down a rabbit hole looking at historical wage data and it's actually wild how much inflation has messed with worker purchasing power. So like, minimum wage in 1958 was just $1 an hour, but adjusted for inflation that's basically $9.92 in today's money. Meanwhile we're still stuck at $7.25 federally since 2009 - that's 15+ years with zero movement from the government. The math doesn't add up when you think about it. Back in the 1960s-70s, minimum wage workers were actually making decent real wages. A dollar in 1968 was worth like $13 today. But now? The $7.25 minimum is basically worth less every year because of inflation eating away at it. Some states are trying to fix this themselves with higher minimums, but it's piecemeal. There was that 2019 proposal to raise it to $15 by 2025 which would've helped millions of workers, but here we are. The gap between nominal wage and actual purchasing power just keeps getting worse. Kind of explains a lot about why entry-level work feels impossible to live on right now.