I’m late to the Inez Feltcher thing, but I thought I might have something to contribute.

Back in 1979-1980, I lived on $325/month. That works out to a little less than $1100/month in today’s money.

I was a grad student at Cornell. My parents paid my car loan. I got health insurance through the school, which came in handy when I got a nasty case of bronchitis. My parents also paid for repairs whenever my car needed them, which was a lot, since I’d bought a 14 year-old MG.

My landlord was understanding about the rent being late sometimes. Not all landlords are.

I learned how long it took for each grocery store to clear its checks through my bank, and I guess I was actually kiting checks, since when I wrote them there was nothing in the account, though it was there when the check got to the bank.

The thing is, when you’re a student, you have the safety net of Mom and Dad to fall back on. You don’t have to show up for work every day and put in 8 hours of hard work. And you’re in school with the expectation of making a hell of a lot more when you get out, not hoping to be promoted to fry cook so you can get another $0.25/hour. You can take on debt when you need to, because you have the expectation of being easily able to pay it back in a few years.

Righties love to say that minimum wage jobs are for students and that adults should get ‘real’ jobs. Meanwhile, they do everything they can to ensure that there are fewer and fewer ‘real’ jobs, and fight to get rid of minimum wage so that employers don’t even have to pay that pittance.