Minimum Wage, A.D. 1968 and Now

[Courtesy Google Images]

According to that article,

“American workers are not making as much [today] as they used to after you account for inflation.  Back in 1968, the minimum wage in the United States was $1.60 an hour. That sounds very small, but after you account for inflation a very different picture emerges.  Using the inflation calculator that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides, $1.60 in 1968 is equivalent to $10.74 today.”

Today’s minimum wage is $7.25.

Thus, according to the BLS, today’s minimum wage provides only two-thirds the purchasing power of the minimum wage of A.D. 1968.

Michael Snyder continues:

“[O]fficial government inflation numbers have been heavily manipulated to make inflation look much lower than it actually is, so the number for today should actually be substantially higher than $10.74, but for purposes of this article we will use $10.74.

“If you were to work a full-time job at $10.74 an hour for a full year (with two weeks off for vacation), you would make about $21,480 for the year.  That isn’t a lot of money, but according to the Social Security Administration, 40.28% of all workers make less than $20,000 a year in America today.  So, that means that more than 40% of all U.S. workers actually make less today than what a full-time minimum-wage worker made back in 1968. That’s how far we’ve fallen.”

Mr. Snyder is right. In terms of national prosperity, American has fallen enormously in my lifetime.

Back in A.D. 1968—the last year that paper dollars were redeemable 1:1 for silver dollars—the minimum wage was $1.60/hour.  That equalled 1.6 silver dollars per hour.

Today’s silver is roughly $25/ounce.  I.6 ounces of silver = $40.

Thus, $1.60 in A.D. 1968—in terms or silver—was equal to about $40 today.  A minimum wage of 1.6 ounces of silver/hour today should be equivalent in purchasing power to an annual gross income measuring fiat currency of $70,000.   That level of real income and purchasing power might’ve been our minimum wage—if we’d kept gold or silver based monetary system.

Instead, today’s minimum wage is $7.25/hour which equals $14,500 gross annual income.

Thanks, in large measure, to allowing our government to impose a pure fiat currency (rather than maintain the “gold and silver coin” required at Article 1 Section 10 Clause 1 of the Constitution), Americans earning a minimum wage today are earning less than 20% of what minimum-wage workers earned in A.D. 1968—when the currency was still backed by silver.

How’d that happen?  Who acquired the “missing” 80% of the minimum wage that’s no longer being paid to workers?

Government.  Corporations.  Banks.  Special interests.  Perhaps even globalists.

But the truth is that over the past 45 years the average person has been robbed—with the complicity of his own government—of 80% of the purchasing power he might otherwise have expected to have earned—if we’d stayed with a constitutionally-required, gold or silver-based currency.

I’m sure that a lot of readers would say that’s crazy to suggest that the loss of gold or silver-based currency has cost the average worker 80% of his purchasing power.

Most Americans can’t even imagine that we might be living on just 20% of what our parents or grandparent lived on in A.D. 1968.

But, our parents didn’t live on credit, did they?  How deep in debut are you, ladies and gentlemen?  All of your credit (and resulting debt) is helping to conceal the fact that you’ve been robbed, big time, by your own government and government-approved special interests.

More evidence?

Three weeks ago I reported on a study conducted by two East-coast economists who calculated the costs of growing government regulations on the economy since A.D. 1949.  They concluded that if the level of regulation was the same today as in A.D. 1949, the median family income would be $330,000 rather than today’s $53,000.  According the researchers’ numbers, since A.D. 1949, government regulations have cut your purchasing power by 80%.

According to those economists, we’ve lost 80% of our purchasing power in 64 years based on government regulations.

According to my calculations, we’ve lost 80% in 45 years based on loss of gold and silver-based currency.

The researchers’ numbers and my own aren’t identical, but they’re sufficiently similar to support the argument that, one way or another, with the complicity of our own government, the American workers’ standard of living has fallen by 80% in my lifetime.  Maybe that loss is due to over-regulation.  Maybe it’s due to the loss of gold- and silver-based currency.  Maybe its due to lowered tariffs and global free trade.  Maybe it’s due to all of the above.

But in every case, the vast majority of that loss can be traced back to our own government.

Those losses will continue until Americans decide to 1) get smart; and 2) get tough.

You need to find both the smarts and the courage to recognize your true enemies.  Then, you must become sufficiently tough to throw the treasonous whores out of public office.

If you won’t get smart and won’t get tough, you’ll see your purchasing power cut even more as compared to what Americans could earn when I was a young man.

How do you get tough?  How do you get smart?  Start pushing government to restore a gold- and/or silver-based dollar.  As long as you consent to be paid in a fiat currency, I guarantee you will continue to be robbed.  As long as you agree to store your savings in any form of a fiat currency, I guarantee you will continue to be robbed.

If you want to preserve your wealth, get gold.

If you want to preserve your purchasing power and your children’s futures, force your government to restore a gold- or silver-based monetary system.

Or, if you prefer, you can sit on your hands, go with the flow, and wonder whatever happened to the American Dream and the once-great United States of America.

It doesn’t take brains to see the truth.  It takes balls.