First, to make sure we're talking about the same people: Full time at $15 hourly puts one well outside the bottom decile. About 35% of Americans were paid less

First, to make sure we're talking about the same people: Full time at $15 hourly puts one well outside the bottom decile. About 35% of Americans were paid less than that in 2020; even in a relatively wealthy state like Virginia, it's more than 30% below that line. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/waynesboro-va https://datausa.io/profile/geo/waynesboro-va For the sake of being on the same page, I'm going to frame the expenses by this article talking about spending categories by income quintile: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-poor-spend-more-on-restaurants-than-all-but-the-very-rich-2016-06-10 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-poor-spend-more-on... 51% nondurables (think grocery store) 16.6% restaurants 14% Other services 10.7% durables 7.2% fuel My most frequent places eating out are probably Chipotle, McDonalds, ChikFilA, and Costco, all in mid-to-low CoL places, so I feel pretty qualified to say that prices have gone up substantially ([0] says 8% 'from 2020' to June 2022), and service has degraded enormously over the same period. Groceries are at least 10% higher.[1] Fuel is a very high outlier, which I'll let you research if you don't have recent experience. 'Durables' and 'other services' are harder to nail down, but the three places I've lived since 2020 have all seen significant price increases (as assessed by talking to people, with me not having the time in place to judge), and service is reliably disappointing enough to take services from convenient to 'I don't have 3 hours to wait on hold for this thing that was screwed up because billing department doesn't have enough people working there' levels of crappy. Finally, and most importantly, people who switch jobs for higher pay will, indeed, tend to see improvement over time. But the people who didn't switch jobs over the same time period will likely have seen 1-3% raises, if any. And the bottom decile probably isn't very full of people job hopping for upward mobility. [0] https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/business/as-mcdonalds-prices-go-up-customers-are-taking-action/ https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/business/as-mcdonalds-p... [1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/business/grocery-inflation/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/business/grocery-inflation/in...