My other top choices will be largely drawn from the "A Better Cambridge" coalition. www.abettercambridge.org

Fantastic! I think about it a lot. Reading Streets of Laredo now, not nearly as good.

Definitely depend on the horizon. I usually show the full horizon. But the last quarter century good too.

People used to talk about wage stagnation from, say, 1975-2000 and the defense that wages grew if you started in 1950 was never considered compelling.

Including stock options granted shows a more pronounced downward trend since 2000.

Both series jumped way up prior to 2000.

All these measures are imperfect, not sure any of them "indefensible."

And the probability Musk passes the hurdles to get that $1T is quite low.

Median and trimmed mean looked fine in September suggesting outliers were driving the overall increase.

In Ec10 we discuss some of the theory and evidence on the effect of the minimum wage on employment. And also talk about how the employment effect is not the only factor in evaluating ones view on it. That slide is attached.

You might view the above as a good thing or as a bad thing. But either way it is remarkable that after regular bipartisan increases the federal minimum wage has disappeared and state-level ones have grown enormously.

And this is compares minimum wages to median wages by country.

This is how U.S. minimum wages compare to other countries in US dollars. Note Massachusetts is $15/hour, which is about in the middle of states that have set rates higher than the Federal government.

As a result, while the inflation-adjusted federal minimum wage is nearly the lowest it has ever been, the average of the state and federal minimum wages is nearly the highest.

(You might want to productivity adjust, in which case federal well below its historical values.)

At the same time that the Federal minimum has effectively disappeared, over the last twenty-five years states have regularly set minimums above the federal government. Now the majority of states have higher minimum wages than the federal government.

Prices are up about 50% since it was increased to $7.25/hr in 2009.

As a result the inflation-adjusted minimum wage is about the lowest it has ever been. The productivity-adjusted min wage is the lowest it has ever been.

Only 1% of workers nationwide are paid at or below that.

The last three legislated increases in the minimum wage were bipartisan:

1989: President Bush (41) and a Democratic Congress
1996: President Clinton and a Republican Congress
2007: President Bush (43) and a Democratic Congress

I discuss this and more with Ross Douthat. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/o...