Minimum wages and the Price of Gas.

I was just sitting here thinking and the highest minimum wages in the U.S. are barely over nine dollars and thats if you include the city of san francisco other than that your looking at between two and seven dollars. Meanwhile, you compare this to the price per gallon of gas or diesel lets just say four dollars. It seems like only a matter of time before the whole system implodes. Something is not right here right now in the U.S.

en.wikipedia.org... Wage Info

Ya know when I first started driving, minimum wage was around $4.25/hr and 1 gallon of unleaded gas was $0.89. Now gas is $4.00/gallon and minimum wage is only $6ish in my area with no mass transit. The price of fuel has impacted my discretionary spending greatly, this already severely impacts those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, and it's only a matter of time before energy costs spark wage inflation to go along with fuel and food inflation. If you think we're seeing inflation now wait until wage inflation gets thrown in the mix. Think US 1970s here.

I remember (before 1980) when the minimum wage was intended for teenagers and not for the family wage earner. When Ronald Reagan put the breaks on 1970's inflation by high unemployment (combination of the beginning of outsourcing, hiring illegal workers, loss of unions), wages gravitated to low levels.

The minimum wage became a standard wage. Family members (fathers, mothers, parents, grandparents on fixed income) had to leave a high paying wage to take a job paying minimum. People were told to make up the difference by taking two or three jobs.

I can remember when my kids were young (must have been late 80's early 90's), the price of a box of cereal just about equaled the minimum wage, until corporations backed off. There was talk at the time that Americans weren't paying enough of a percentage of their income on food that others in the world were paying.
Ha! This was all at a time when housing percentages increased greatly!

So, the American worker has been expected to get into debt to support corporate greed and Wall Street speculation. Little wonder American savings rate is low, when discretionary income gets eaten up. We are told to "shop" to counter terrorism and failing economic/energy policies.

I am not surprised to see corporations and their Washington minions overlook the increasingly dispensable American worker.
A wage structure based on the minimum wage needs to have housing become unattached to speculation (not 50 year interest only loans as the only way to afford a house!) And now, with rising fuel (not just gas but also for heating, shipping, food, etc.) costs, the American worker is being bled dry. Corporat/Wall Street leeches indeed!