Minimum Federal wage in 1972 was $1.60 (
http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/stateMinWageHis.htm ).

Today it's $7.25 ( http://www.minimum-wage.org/posters.asp )

In 1972 gasoline was 36 cents a gallon  (
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/gasoline-prices-perspective
) and yesterday I paid $4.259 a gallon

At http://www.minneapolisfed.org/index.cfm (the federal reserve
inflation calculator) I find that the $1.60 minimum wage in 1972 is
equal to $8.89 in 2012 dollars and the 36 cents a gallon gas in 1972
would now cost $2.

So Federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation and gasoline
has more than doubled when you take inflation into it.
In 1972 an hour of minimum wage work would buy you 4.44 gallons of
gas, today you get 1.7 gallons of gas.

So what does this all mean? Nothing as long as I have the cash, the
stations still have the fuel and I need it.

Rob
becida@comcast.net

At  5/19/2012 04:37 PM, Loren Busch wrote:
>  RE: Cost of gas vs. wages over the years
>One big problem with the statistics being used.  They ignore the real
>numbers.  The $750 a year wage in 1912 had risen to about $700 a month in
>the mid 1960's but the 20 cent gas of 1912 had only risen to about 29 cents
>a gallon.  And the cost of an automobile had risen to around $2,500 to
>$3,000 in the mid 1960's.  And then in the mid 1970's all hell broke loose
>on gas prices.  And by the time our Vanagons were first being built in 1980
>proportions of wages to vehicle cost to gas prices was as totally different
>from 1912 as you can get.
>BTW, trying to express the value of any product in terms of
>wages/salaries,  usually referred to as the "Labor Theory of Economics",
>was discredited and dropped from any serious economic discussion by about
>the mid 1800's.