This will probably be an unpopular reply, but "real median household income" — aka, inflation-adjusted median income — has steadily risen since the 90s and is currently at an all-time high in the United States. [1] Inflation includes the cost of housing (by measuring the cost of rent).
However, we are living through a housing supply crisis, and while overall cost of living hasn't gone up, housing's share of that has massively multiplied. We would all be living much richer lives if we could bring down the cost of housing — or at least have it flatline, and let inflation take care of the rest.
Education is interesting, since most people don't actually pay the list price. The list price has gone up a lot, but the percentage of people paying list price has similarly gone down a lot: from over 50% in the 90s for state schools to 26% today, thanks to a large increase in subsidy programs (student aid). While real education costs have still gone up somewhat, they've gone up much less than the prices you're quoting lead you to believe: those are essentially a tax on the rich who don't qualify for student aid. [2]
I think everyone has quibbles about the CPI. Ultimately though, it would take a lot of cherry-picking to make it seem like overall cost of living has gone up 3x while wages have gone up less. As a counterexample, an NES game in 1990 cost $50 new (in 1990 dollars! Not adjusted for inflation). Battlefield 6 cost $70 new this year (in 2025 dollars), and there were widespread complaints about games getting "too expensive." In real terms games have become massively less expensive — especially considering that the budget for Battlefield 6 was $400MM, and the budget for Super Mario World in 1990 was less than $2MM.
There are a zillion examples like this. Housing has gone way up adjusted for inflation, but many other things have gone way, way down adjusted for inflation. I think it's hard to make a case that overall cost of living has gone up faster than median wages, and the federal reports indicate the opposite: median real income has been going up steadily for decades.
Housing cost is visible and (of course, since it's gone up so much) painful. But real median income is not underwater relative to the 90s. And there's always outrage when something costs more than it used to, even if that's actually cheaper adjusted for inflation: for example, the constant outrage about videogame prices, which have in fact massively declined despite requiring massively more labor to make and sell.
Housing, vehicles, groceries, and health insurance are all up massively. Who gives a shit how much a game costs if you can't afford groceries and rent?
Fortunately, you are wrong. The cost of milk in 1995 was $2.50/gallon; today, it's about $4.13/gallon — which is less than inflation since 1995. Ditto for many other grocery products: although you can always cherry pick some that have gone up relative to inflation (e.g. eggs), there are many that gave gone down. Groceries are tracked by the CPI.
Vehicles are also cheaper relative to inflation. In 1995, a new Toyota Camry cost $16k base. Today, a new Toyota Camry costs $28k base, which is less than inflation on $16k since 1995 — while being much safer, faster, larger, more comfortable, with a better sound system, and more fuel-efficient. Vehicle prices are tracked by the CPI, as well.
We can keep going. How about a pair of canvas Converse sneakers in 1995? $30 new. Today, 30 years later with 112% inflation: $60 new, aka, slightly cheaper relative to inflation than in the 90s.
I'm guessing you use a laptop for work. Let's see: in 1991, an Apple Powerbook cost a little over $2k. Today, you can buy a Macbook Air that makes the 1991 laptop seem like an abnormally heavy and ugly calculator for $1k. Is it unfair that I'm using laptops rather than desktops? Okay, let's look at desktops: in 1998 when the iMac launched, it cost $1299. Today, a massively faster iMac with a much larger screen costs... $1299.
Etc etc.
As per my original comment: you are right that housing has gone way up. But not everything has, and wages have gone up as well, and it would be very hard to claim overall cost of living is up 3x while wages are up less.
In 2010 I paid 3k for a 10 year old truck with 100k miles. That same truck today costs easily 15k. Same story for rent. Same story for groceries. Same story for health insurance.
Who gives a shit how much trinkets costs if you can't afford groceries and rent?
You're identifying the right problem (school and housing costs are completely out of hand) but then resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down.
The easy way to realize this is to notice that the median wage has increased by proportionally less than the federal minimum wage has. The people in the middle can't afford school or housing either. And what happens if you increase the minimum wage faster than overall wages? Costs go up even more, and so does unemployment when small businesses who are also paying those high real estate costs now also have to pay a higher minimum wage. You're basically requesting the annihilation of the middle class.
Whereas you make housing cost less and that helps the people at the bottom and the people in the middle.
>resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down.
I'm not really resorting to any solution.
My comment is pointing out that when you only do one side of the equation (income) without considering the other side (expenses), it's worthless. Especially when you are trying to make a comparison across years.
How we go about fixing the problem, if we ever do, is another conversation. But my original comment doesn't attempt to suggest any solution, especially not one that "requests the annihilation of the middle class". It's solely to point out that adventured's comment is a bunch of meaningless numbers.
> It's solely to point out that adventured's comment is a bunch of meaningless numbers.
The point of that comment was to point out that minimum wage is irrelevant because basically nobody makes that anyway; even the entry-level jobs pay more than the federal minimum wage.
In that context, arguing that the higher-than-minimum wages people are actually getting still aren't sufficient implies an argument that the minimum wage should be higher than that. And people could read it that way even if it's not what you intended.
So what I'm pointing out is that that's the wrong solution and doing that rather than addressing the real issue (high costs) is the thing that destroys the middle class.
> (school and housing costs are completely out of hand)
On the housing side, the root problem is obvious:
Real estate cannot be both affordable and considered an investment. If it's affordable, that means the price is staying flat relative to inflation, which makes it a poor investment. If it's a good investment, that means the value is rising faster than inflation, which means unaffordability is inevitable.
The solution to the housing crisis is simple: Build more. But NIMBYs and complex owners who see their house/complex as an investment will fight tooth-and-nail against any additional supply since it could reduce their value.
> Real estate cannot be both affordable and considered an investment. If it's affordable, that means the price is staying flat relative to inflation, which makes it a poor investment. If it's a good investment, that means the value is rising faster than inflation, which means unaffordability is inevitable.
This is a misunderstanding of what makes something a good investment. Something is a good investment if it's better for you than your other alternatives.
Suppose you buy a house and then have a mortgage payment equivalent to the amount you'd have been paying in rent until the mortgage is paid off. At that point you have an asset worth e.g. $200,000 and you no longer have a mortgage payment. By contrast, if you'd been paying rent instead then you'd have to continue paying rent. That makes the house a good investment even if its value hasn't increased by a single cent since you bought it -- it could even have been a good investment if its value has gone down, because its true value is in not having to pay rent. Paying $300,000 over time for a house which is now worth $200,000 leaves you $200,000 ahead of the person who paid $300,000 in rent in order to end up with the asset you can find on the inside of an empty box.
Likewise, suppose you're in the landlord business. In one city it costs a million dollars to buy a two bedroom unit and then you can rent it out for $10,000/month. In another city the same two bedroom unit costs $10,000 to buy but then you could only rent it out for $100/month. If your business is to buy the property and rent it out, is one of these a better investment than the other? No, the ROI is exactly the same for both of them and either one could plausibly be a good investment even without any appreciation.
In both cases the value of the property doesn't have to increase to make it a good investment and in both cases the value of the property may not even come into play, because if you're planning to keep the asset in order to live in it or rent it out then you can't simultaneously sell it. And for homeowners, even if you were planning to sell it eventually, you'd then still need somewhere to live, so having all housing cost more isn't doing the average homeowner any good. If they sold they'd only have to pay the higher price to live somewhere else.
However, there is one major difference between homeowners and landlords. If you increase the supply of housing, rents go down. For homeowners that doesn't matter, because they're "renting" to themselves; they pay (opportunity cost) and receive (imputed rent) in equal amounts, so it doesn't matter to them if local rents change -- or it benefits them because it lowers local cost of living and then they pay lower prices for local things. Whereas landlords will fight you on that to their last breath, because that's their actual return on investment. Which is why they're the villains and they need to lose.
sweet! according to austintexas.gov, that's only $2.63 below the 2024 living wage. $5.55 below, if you use the MIT numbers for 2025.
As long as you don't run into anything unforseen like medical expenses, car breakdowns, etc., you can almost afford a bare-bones, mediocre life with no retirement savings.
I don't disagree that there has been a huge issue with stagnant wages, but not everybody who works minimum wage needs to make a living wage. Some are teenagers, people just looking for part time work, etc. Pushing up minimum wage too high can risk destroying jobs that are uneconomical at that level that could have been better than nothing for many people.
That being said, there's been an enormous push by various business groups to do everything they can to keep wages low.
It's a complicated issue and one can't propose solutions without acknowledging that there's a LOT of nuance...
>but not everybody who works minimum wage needs to make a living wage
I think this is a distraction that is usually rolled out to derail conversations about living wages. Not saying that you're doing that here, but it's often the case when the "teenager flipping burgers" argument is brought up.
Typically in conversations about living wages, people are talking about financially independent adults trying to make their way through life without starving while working 40 hours per week. I don't think anyone is seriously promoting a living wage for the benefit of financially dependent minors.
And, in any case, the solution could also be (totally, or in part) a reduction in expenses instead of increase in income.
>It's a complicated issue and one can't propose solutions without acknowledging that there's a LOT of nuance...
That's for sure! I know it's not getting solved on the hacker news comment section, at least.
> I think this is a distraction that is usually rolled out to derail conversations about living wages. Not saying that you're doing that here, but it's often the case when the "teenager flipping burgers" argument is brought up.
If you're focusing on minimum wage, they tent to be highly coupled, though some jurisdictions have lower minimum wages for minors to deal with this.
> Typically in conversations about living wages, people are talking about financially independent adults trying to make their way through life without starving while working 40 hours per week. I don't think anyone is seriously promoting a living wage for the benefit of financially dependent minors.
Few minimum wage jobs even offer the option to work full time. Many retail environments have notoriously unpredictable shifts that are almost impossible for workers to plan around. I've heard varying reasons for this (companies like having more employees working fewer hours for flexibility down to avoiding people on the full time payroll means they legally don't have to offer benefits). The result is that minimum wage earners often have to juggle multiple jobs, childcare, and the negative effects of commuting to all of them.
This also ignores many other factors around poverty, such as housing costs and other inflation.
> That's for sure! I know it's not getting solved on the hacker news comment section, at least.
For sure! 99% of people on HN haven't had to experience living long term off of it. I did for awhile in college, where outside of tuition I had to pay my own way in a large city (I fully acknowledge that this is anecdotal and NOT the same as poverty living). I only had to feed myself, not think about saving for the future, and I was sharing a house with other geeky roommates where we had some of the best times of our lives. I don't think we could have pulled that off in today's economic environment...
The part time workers has been sorted out as living wage calculations assume full time work.
Even if you are a teenager you deserve a living wage - if a teenager living at home needs to work full time, then that home likely need some of those money.
Holy moly! 11 whole dollars an hour!?
Okay, so we went from $4.25 to $11.00. That's a 159% change. Awesome!
Now, lets look at... School, perhaps? So I can maybe skill-up out of Little Caesars and start building a slightly more comfortable life.
Median in-state tuition in 1995: $2,681. Median in-state tuation in 2025: $11,610. Wait a second! That's a 333% change. Uh oh.
Should we do the same calculation with housing...? Sure, I love making myself more depressed. 1995: $114,600. 2025: $522,200. 356% change. Fuck.