gallons of milk. ($1 minimum wage in 1960 and milk was 49 cents a gallon.

Min wage today buys you 2.9 gallons of milk (Walmart). That's almost a 50 percent increase in milk buying ability. Of course the savings for milk probably went towards their iPhone bill.

I do think real estate prices could be causing more stress than the minimum wage, however I haven't really looked into it. One big thing about real estate, is prices have to be higher today than in 1960 - if for no other reason than the vast majority of homes are dual income. So many households having so much additional income means the demand and thus the price will increase sharply until they even out.

Same thing happens with minimum wage by the way - increase it and people will have a short term gain, but long term it always evens out. I remember having a discussion with some of my employees a couple years ago just after AZ increased minimum wage by several dollars...they were complaining to me how they get more money now but that everything they buy has gone up in price (full disclosure, all of them made several dollars more than minimum wage but I had to increase their pay because of the min wage increase).