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| Minimum wage in 1998 | $5.15 |
| Gasoline cost in 1998 | $1.24 |
| Minutes:seconds worked per gallon gas in 1998 | 14:27 |
| - | |
| Minimum wage in 2008 | $5.85 |
| Gasoline cost in 2008 | $4.00 |
| Minutes:seconds worked per gallon gas in 2008 | 41:02 |
Even though I make more than minimum wage, that kid working at McD's back in 1998 still has me beat on purchasing power*, as far as gasoline goes.
Thoughts? Anyone interested in the "bread and circuses" model that compares the cost of food and movie tickets? Or what would be the appropriate circus equivalent?
*If you would like to figure out your own costs, but are math-impaired, here's what I did:
Question: How long must you work at a certain wage to earn a gallon of gas at a certain cost?
This is only tricky because it involves minutes and seconds, which aren't regular decimal fractions of an hour.
Example:
Cost of gas divided by wages
1.24 / 5.15
answer: 0.24077...
x 60 to get minutes
answer: 14.44660...
14 is the minutes here (and the seconds are still after the decimal); write down 14 somewhere and subtract it.
answer: 0.44660 (same as above without the 14)
x 60 to get seconds
answer: 26.79611
26, rounded up to 27, is the seconds.
Answer: 14 minutes, 27 seconds at 5.15 an hour equals one gallon of gas at 1.24 a gallon.
