[ARC5] OT Costs - and everything else

[David Stinson]

I believe inflation numbers to be a "red herring;" 
you're just moving the decimal place.  
No one talks about the figure that really matters:
Purchasing power per hour of your labor.
That has taken a serious hit, just in the last 10 years.

Take a basket of items you use every week.
Calculate how long you'd have to work at median wage
in, say, 1964, to pay for that basket of goods.
Now calculate how long you'd have to work at 
today's median wage to purchase the same basket.

Don't do the calculation if you're easily discouraged.