> If minimum wage had simply kept pace with inflation it would be > 20 dollars per hour today. I just plugged in 1970's minimum wage (1.45) into an inflation c

> If minimum wage had simply kept pace with inflation it would be > 20 dollars per hour today. I just plugged in 1970's minimum wage (1.45) into an inflation calculator (I tried the first several links in Google), and it shows 9.38 in 2018. Of course, inflation varies based on different items in a basket of goods, and there are a number of things we have now that didn't exist in 1970 (cable / satellite TV, internet, cell phones, mobile internet, Netflix). On the flip side, you no longer pay an outrageous per minute fee for long distance.