Economically, it seems like the current era has been marked by ever-increasing prices combined with relatively stagnant wages, and has been for as long as I've cared about economics (i.e. as long as I've been a legal adult). How long has this been a trend?
Bonus question: what parallels does this draw in history, and (ballpark) how long does this sort of thing usually last?
There was one year that saw negative inflation but it is within the twenty year rule.
If you are looking at iflation adjusted mininum wage, then 1968 was the best year to earn minimum wage according to dept of labor.
A while back I was playing with some numbers and made this graph, the more interesting number is, I think, minimum wage relative to per capita gdp: http://i.imgur.com/MBbP6at.png
Everything is scaled to effective 2010 values, meaning that the minimum wage in a given year relative to per capita gdp is in 2010 dollars as a relative portion of the 2010 per capita gdp.
