When my dad grew up on a farm in the Imperial Valley in California, farm workers worked very hard for six months and then goofed off the rest of the year and spent time with their family. A modern equivalent to what they were paid would be to hire a law student for three months and that would pay tuition and living expenses for the year, and I'm not kidding.

I make 13$ an hour for working as a security guard in silicon valley. Houses cost half a million. I survive by sleeping in my van. Some of these jobs require a car to get to, and are in cold areas where you have to live in a house. You have to have a room (in a shared apartment or house) and a car, and a minimum wage job allows you to have only one of the two, the car or the room. I can't wait for the dollar to renormalize and for lower quintile wages to double after inflation. We can afford to have apartments then! Well, not in silicon valley of course, but at least in places with more reasonable housing prices, the places they will be building all the new factories and mines and smelters and synfuel refineries to replace the former imports. I'll still be sleeping in my van, but at least I will get my health insurance back.