1950
Often looked to as a model era, the 1950s may have been nearly as picture-perfect as Leave it to Beaver seemed to suggest―minimum wage workers could pay rent for a month for less than a week and a half of full-time work―or catch Disney’s Cinderella for just over a half-hour of labor.Minimum wage: $0.75/hour
Gas: $0.27 or 22m
Movie ticket: $0.48 or 38m
Rent: $42 or 56hrs
(All figures represent the average cost of a movie ticket, a gallon of gas, and the median rent.)
