Remember when a pack of cigarettes didnt cost 2 hrs of minimum wage?!

2009. Minimum wage: $7.25. Average cost of home: $185,200.
2023. Minimum wage: $7.25. Average cost of home: $436,800.

2009. Minimum wage: $7.25. Average cost of car: $23,276.
2023. Minimum wage: $7.25. Average cost of car: $48,008.

 

and they were already way to expensive ten years before that and ten years before that.
not sure what minimum wage was when raygun was elected,
but a house (or a bare peace of land you could lawfully build on) and any motor vehicle less then ten years old, were way too much already then too.

 

It's difficult but I love smoking so much that it's mainly what I work for in the first place. I would trade a house for a continous supply of cigarettes if I had to.

 

Well, I was born in 1945 and came home to a home where both parents smoked heavily in the home. At age 1 week I developed asthma and have had it for almost 78 years. Think there’s a relationship? So both parents died excruciating deaths from lung cancer.

Me, I think cigarettes have been way too cheap….we should tax the living shit out of them and discourage smoking every way possible. I grew up at a time when smoking was everywhere including in my doctors examining room. Fortunes built by the big tobacco families should be confiscated to pay for the damage they have caused…and they knew. What a cruel disgrace.

 

Minimum wages are set by each US State. The $7.25 is a Federaly set floor. Some cities have tried a local minimum wage.

Tobacco taxes also differ by state. Taxes on Cigs fall disportionaltly on poor schmucks who still smoke.

 

Currently
20 states go by the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour--my state of Oklahoma being one of them. Lucky us.