When the hell did everything get so huge and expensive? For example, a gamecube was $99 after price drops...

I wonder how cheap it would be if you remove the portability elements. Probably like $100, $150.

I'd buy a switch it there was a stationary version.

Buy a sachel

Inflation, you dumb fucking bitch

Fuck off, Dobson.

Normalfags will pay for it, that's the main reason why. It has become acceptable to replace something every year or so simply because it is new. The days of building a piece of hardware and tapping out the full potential over the course of 5+ years is long gone. Instead all games are developed to run on all platforms and the only difference between those platforms is the minimal hardware advantage one might have over the other. In a world where people ditch a smart phone every year for a slightly bigger screen, or slightly larger internal memory, or a software feature that is locked to the new model for no reason other than pushing sales you end up with subpar products all around.

We now live in a society where you are not only encouraged to buy new things instead of making use of the old ones and/or fixing them but also one that will defend the companies pushing it on consumers. If you dare complained you're labeled as entitled or buzzword of the week and your opinion is drowned under a sea of shills and normal faggorty. Normalfags will not just buy this shit, they'll sing its praises from the roof tops and make smug faces about owning it.

In this very thread people are already coming to defend the practice when they know damn well it boils down to pure greed. SNK kept the Neo-Geo going for a decade and they were making shit that looked amazing for the hardware it was running on all the way into the early 2000s. People were dropping quarters on those games constantly then and they still do now.

it's $99
reminder that it's cheaper to buy two switches if you want a dock and two extra joycons

...

that makes no fucking sense

That cheap would make it sound like a cheaply made piece of trash like the NES classic mini.

Please go back to reddit, you aren't a special snowflake.

see

You have release dates. Search the web for better inflation count apps and do the math yourself. Back then, those machines were expensive as fuck.

Nice, you cherry picked the 80s for high prices. A Dreamcast launched at $200 in 1999 which is about $275 today. Games were $30 a pop on physical media new on the day they launched.

That's why everything went to 3D models which are cheaper to produce, right? But wait, how come the game is now twice as much, for half the content, with endless DLC micro-transactions?

Greed, pure and simple.

How about you find a flaw in my argument instead of deflecting in the hopes of fooling newfags into thinking I got here yesterday?

but 200 dollars is 200 dollars?

There is no pleasing you anons.

wew laddie, just like the PS3.

You did just get here yesterday, you faggot, and your entire argument is invalid because you think you're a special snowflake and you think everybody else does things you don't do. You really think everybody ditches their phones every year because it has a bigger screen or some shit? No, if anything, they don't ditch period and hang onto them because they usually pay for them monthly through a payment plan. And if they do decide to ditch their phones it's usually because the carrier offers some sort of trade up deal. You're basing your arguments on nothing but some weak anecdotal evidence, which is something redditfags love to do.

No, you dumb bitch.

The gamecube was $199 when it came out, which comes to $250 when you factor in inflation. That's not much better than the switch when you consider that the craziest gimmick the gamecube had was that it was shaped like a cube and had anti-piracy discs.

And handle. Don't forget about the handle! Nintendo seems never forgot this revolutionary idea!

And why the hell doesn't the switch have a handle? Nintendo really dropped the ball there.

They went with the mini-DVD clones because they didn't want to pay licensing fees to the DVD Consortium that Sony was a part of. This is why Nintendo has never formally adopted a Blu-ray too, going with a proprietary disk developed by Panasonic.

Normalfags do upgrade to the new shiny every chance they get. Even you admit they're stupid enough to buy into a contract. Maybe if you interacted with people outside of your basement you'd understand.

The OP isn't talking about the launch price, he's talking about the lack of price drop after a year or so. There is no price drop because there is no real competition in the market. There is no real competition in the market because most consumers bend over and take whatever is shoved up their asses. They see a people paid to stand in line for a new phone on TV and they go join the line. They see a line of people paid to stand in front of a mall on Thanksgiving and guess what, they join the line.

Also, for reference: 6th gen

Imagine paying $406 for objectively the worst console of the generation.

For reference, post 8th gen.

Cuckbama
Inflation
Industry Corruption
Extended console generations
Bloated hardware

Nah. Do it yourself. It's only a minute in paint.net.

I'm posting on my fagphone

...

Sorry, meant, to say, go to wikipedia yourself.

Okay, PS4 was 399 on release (420 bucks tofay) and Xbone was 499 on release (540 bucks today) Now, the PS4 is 270-350 depending on what you get, while the xbox is 350. The "new versions" are near their launch date price.

Now I feel like a jackass for telling you to do it yourself. Sorry for that and my respect to you for your hard work.

Now to the point: there is no sense for doing these comparisons for generation "in progress", because we can still buy that stuff in shops. I don't think that there is purpose for doing this for 7th gen either.

As a token of my gratitude, the fabled 1st gen pong machines. Just imagine: there are now 50yo walking this earth - first vidya faggots…

The dollar hasn't inflated 5% since 2014, that would be insane. And unless you just wanted to say 420 for the PS4 (somewhat excusable), 105% of 500 is 525, not 540. In reality, since 2014, the dollar has only inflated by about 1.5%, putting the today's monetary value of the PS4 at $406 and the xbox at $507.50.
I rounded the 99s up for simplicity.

1: There's more advanced shit inside them,
2: Companies have gotten greedier, especially after becoming corporations, with investors to please and an ever higher profit margin
3: Inflation alongside employment wages stagnating has led to a massive discrepancy between buying power and the price of everyday goods. It's the same reason why games are incredibly expensive lately as well.

Satchels are literally a gay mans accessory. Do you want him to get hit on by other men?

Yeah satchels are super gay, I usually just carry a rucksack wherever I go.
To be honest, there are a load of useful or fun things that carry a strong taboo, like handbags, make-up (sounds gay but when you actually think about it, if there was no taboo on wearing make-up, then it would be very popular with both sexes), anything to do with sex, dyeing your hair, using sun beds etc etc etc. I'm sure this all sounds SUPER homo (or at least metro) sexual, but if you think about it directly, forgetting about all the social taboos those are all fun or useful things that people don't do for no reason other than being embarrassed.

those prices barely lasted. I bought a PSX at 22500 pesetas 2 years after launch (the equivalent of what, $130-140?). They didn't have any reason to low the price so much so soon, yet they did because it was the normal thing. Until they realized they could get away with not lowering prices as much. PS3 is still way more expensive than that and it's 11 years old

but that's not the gamecube

Since 2013, not 2014, my friend.

Also, you're right. I msityped it. It's 412 and 515.

Fuck, that's almost $100 more than the US price even after the horrendous exchange rate.

feels good to be USA

HOLY SHIT

the ps4 is even cheaper than that

Nintendo really needs to get a grip.

Looks like someone's gonna have a bat time.

I'll fuck you up, bitch

Deported.

Nigger, haven't you ever heard of inflation. Do you have any notion how much money the kikes have printed recently? The total value of all the dollars put together is the same so when they print ten times more, each dollar is worth times less then before. Not to mention console gamers now demand parity to PC game performance and that has always been relatively expensive.

this
OP is an idiot and so is everyone who takes his bait

Here is my pong machine. My father gave it to me along with his 2600 in the mid 80s. Kept them and play them from time to time.

In the 60s you could buy a whole meal with drinks and dessert included for 1$. It's called inflation. The same thing costs now around 15$, just to give you an idea. Basically, things that used to cost less before would cost a lot more now.
I'm not exactly sure why, but it have to do with the devaluation of the currency, and that could happen for a number of reasons.

It's impossible to keep a currency's value perfectly steady against a constantly changing economy and population and inflation is generally considered preferable to deflation because money becoming less valuable over time makes it easier to pay back loans, which encourages people to take loans, which encourages growth.

Video games were considered a complete luxury item. Like, legit luxury, not just a hobby. Inflation's a bitch.

That sounds like a terrible plan Because it's happening in Venezuela right now.
I guess it's just about not having too much of those.

I'm sorry OP but you're retarded.

The Gamecube was 99 dollars after price drop? I WONDER WHY

Wiki Fire phone you dunce.

Christ I think most game consoles released at 300 dollars or more.

Slow inflation is a good thing. The shit we've seen in just the last 10 years is obscene.

If inflation gets too high then the money is worthless by the time it gets repaid, which encourages institutions to not loan money. It's a balancing act.

...

The NES launched at 200 USD, the SNES launched at 200 USD, the N64 launched at 200 USD, and the N64 launched at 200 USD. Guess what those cost today?

Loans have interest for a reason, user.

Yeah when I was a kid I wanted a SNES.

Hard to believe it now but the SNES was cutting edge back in 1991 or something and it was fucking expensive.

Psst. Home consoles were never cutting edge. Arcades held that title up until PCs got 3d accelerators.

The closest thing to "cutting edge" for home consoles was the Neo-Geo

That shit doesn't really matter in Venezuela. Unless your interest rate is 100% per month, then the money is useless, because inflation here is 100% or more per month.
Banks still give plenty of loans, like candy, in fact.

Not always. My own country is so politically stabe and economically secure that it could actually borrow money at zero interest at the height of the recession.

Hahah what a stupid fucking faggot.

Also inflation doesn't work like that- of course it means general buying power for money, but goods themselves change price. Gasoline in 1918 cost 25 cents on the gallon, and today that's 4 fucking dollars. However, gasoline today costs 2 dollars.
You also have to factor in the fact that inflation doesn't mean shit if the prices don't change. Consistently, up until like the 5th-6th generation of consoles, they cost like 200 fucking dollars. Suddenly, it changes? Why? If they were adjusting for inflation, it would have been more gradual, obviously.

You can take courses online for free, user. Or you could be an autodidact and go learn it yourself. You are using a tool connected to the sum total of human knowledge. Go do research.

Actually, outside of the US gas costs much more. Our government subsidizes it heavily.

I made fun of you for going to college, what do you think I am?
you said econ course so I assumed it wasn't some faggy website like con academy

Newfag, look between the timestamp and post number, and then go back to reddit.

This chart is misleading without the proper context. Most money is actually created by commercial banks when they make loans, because depositors' money still remains in their accounts. Banks create the money that they lend, with the government's blessing. The vast majority (something like 80%) of money is created in this way, rather than through the government-managed money supply.
We should switch to a banking system in which commercial banks lend out the depositors' actual money. This would require there to be a limit to the percentage of their account that depositors could withdraw in a given timespan, though. However, that could (and would, due to market forces) be offset by raising the interest rate paid to depositors. It would also encourage a larger portion of corporate borrowing to be done via bonds rather than loans.
It would probably also decrease the amount of credit available to households, but honestly household credit shouldn't even exist in the first place–it's a byproduct of the wage stagnation that began in the '70s.
Not that I have an opinion on these things.

Looks like you're the newfag, doubleposter.

I'd take you more seriously if you weren't so blithely unaware that IDs are enabled on this board.

The proper context is jews jewing jewily, as it has been for 1500 to 5000 years depending on one's location. The goy needs to give up a good portion of his life (human effort + time) to get a few slips of the same paper a kike can print infinitely.

Even young, dumb, anons are starting to notice inflation but when I was a little shit, only really old people would point it out and complain about it. I remember my grandparents going crazy when I would ask them for a quarter to play at the arcade. Saying, "back before the Great Depression we could feed the family for a few days on that and now it only buys you a few minutes of PAC-MAN or Asteroids." I got them to chip in on the NES because I told them it was cheaper than going to the arcade and they would know where we were instead of going out, etc. Tally up your game time over your costs with modern vidya versus equivalent arcade time with MAME. Kids are fucking spoiled rotten nowadays.

You realize the fucking Sega CD's launch price was 515$ in today's money, throw in the Genesis (after the first price drop) that you needed to play it and we're talking over 700 dollery-doos. It's the other way around hardware has gotten less expensive not more.

It's more complicated than that. The fact that the money supply is in the hands of commercial banks, rather than the elected government, is a big problem, and while it has important consequences for the money supply and thus for inflation, it's a bigger problem even than that. The government does have some control, since they set reserve requirements that effectively limit how much banks can lend (i.e., how much money they can create), but the fact that the money supply is even implicitly in the hands of commercial bodies is bad fucking news.
While we're at it, the government also shouldn't issue bonds (or other securities), since it has to pay interest on those, which results in more spending than would have been necessary if the money had simply been raised through taxes. The only way for the government to make those interest payments is through taxing the people to–or by simply printing more money. And both are shitty options.

I agree, and my main beef with it is that it encourages shoddy programming and forced obsolescence.

What kind of tiny pockets do you even have
probably a skinny jeans wearing hipster fag

That's a retarded fucking statement though it was cutting-edge on the consumer level.
That's the equivalent of saying a top of the line gaming pc isn't "cutting edge" today because NSA supercomputers exist.
In terms of what the average consumer could own in the home the 16-bit consoles were indeed relatively cutting edge especially at there price point, of course arcades were more technologically far more impressive, an arcade PCB would've cost anywhere from two to five thousand dollars just to play one game, hell most arcade owners leased the things they were so expensive. It's apples and oranges.

Were they really still selling GC games in August 2013?

Governments are just the biggest/baddest group of bandits or mafioso. Bad enough that they force people to pay into their protection racket but give them the power to make fake money and you will live in an inescapable nightmare of a police state. (Which we already do, because we already have.) Was playing Mount & Blade a while back and realized that is how pretty much all featherless bipeds lived before they came under the yoke of the kikes. Local warlords are the only natural or normal form of government and they were shoa'd because it would be impossible for a kike to come to power under a system like that. So sad…

Things got more expensive because they began using more expensive parts to build things. Companies could easily manage a steeper price drop if they simply used cheaper parts, but consumers have this stupid idea that cheap hardware = cheap games these days.

I don't believe in a "natural" form of government. Social institutions are pretty malleable.
But yeah, you're not wrong. The governments we live under are involuntary associations. It's all well and good that we have a vote, but when you can't leave the party, you don't really have power. And God help you if you live in a noguns country, then you're really powerless.
I think secession should always be legal. I have other opinions on the structure of government, but they'd probably just get me branded a Holla Forums shill, so I'll keep them to myself.

When they decided to put Modern Gaming PCs in console shells. When people decided grapics > every other aspect of video games.

it's not.

In the 60s you didn't have calicucks w/ women studies PhD protesting for a $15/h minimum wage.

I'm gonna stop your retardathon right fucking there, shitbiscuit. Amiga. Go fucking educate yourself.

$15/hr isn't an unreasonable minimum wage, honestly.
The bigger issue is that the minimum wage should be tied to inflation, so we can stop having political shitshows over raising it every ten years or so when it becomes impossible to live on–it would just rise automatically with the money supply (and maybe with the consumer price index).

$99 in 2001 is worth $137.37 today. $300 today is worth $216.21 in 2001.

wew

Learn the difference between nominal and real value. If wages increase at the same rate as inflation, purchasing power stays the same, because the proportion of wages compared to the money supply remains the same. Costs therefore wouldn't be effected. You don't know what you're talking about. Just because you don't understand economics doesn't mean other people are trying to "look smart." And I'm not an ancap.

2007 when normalfags and their normalfag todlers and their normalfah grandmothers all got iphones for 400bux a pop and people lost what little sense of value they had.

wouldn't that be nice. warehouse i work for reduced wages nearly in half shortly before i got hired and stopped giving yearly standard of living increases because the shareholders looked at financials and saw the company was paying their workers nearly top wages in the whole country for the field
while still turning a profit mind you

This bugs me for a long time. Are there 50yo hardcore gamers, who started all the way from pong machines? There would be small numbers in US, Japan and probably UK, but it is posible that there are gaming grandpas out there. Even if only 1% of owners stayed with vidya, surviving 1980s crash, switching western consoles (atari, magnavox and coleco) to eastern (sega, nintendo, sony) or even PC clones…

only 5 million iphones were sold in their first year. Don't tell me you actually believe that retarded image that gets passed around so often.

Public companies were a mistake.

Shareholders in general were a mistake.

It's called inflation you stupid fucking child.

Consoles and computers were more expensive decades ago than they are now.
Just look for ads of old stuff, prices are ridiculous by today standards.
At least the stuff you were buying was actually useful.

In the 70s, Nixon negotiated a deal with the G8 countries to go off the gold standard because the US economy couldn't grow if the USD was still backed by gold because there wasn't enough in treasuries. This major shift caused rapid inflation since it was a novel concept. Globalism was also starting to take place. After WWII, the US started heavily investing Europe, in particular Germany, and Pacific Asian countries, particularly Japan. Germany and Japan were the most devastated parts and the US didn't want them going for a third round. State of the art facilities were built, so manufacturing jobs were actually cheaper there. Same thing happened to South Korea after the Korean War, and a similar case is going to happen in Africa due to heavy Chinese interest in the continent. Japan, in particular, flourished because they didn't have anything like the EU due to every Asian country hating them, and now they own nearly as much US debt as China does. Speaking of China, Nixon also started trade with them, and because China doesn't have nearly as much environmental regulations and remains pseudo-communist, they were able to mass produce shit very easily. You also have things like NAFTA, but there's been a lot of uncertainty about Mexico now that Trump has been elected. Wages started to plateau in the 70s, but costs of living has continued to rise and rise.

A MacBook Pro costs $4 more than the computer pictured.

user, I'm pretty sure that's the price just for 64kb of RAM.

It's how the market works user. A new thing is invented by a bunch of nerds tinkering with technology, then other nerds start involving small sums of money, then some entrepreneur picks up the scent and throws his money in the pot. Eventually an industry is formed, mostly involving nerds and their niche audience, but as time goes on, more money gets involved and production values rise, the thing gains mainstream appeal. At this point, exponential growth of the industry happens. Unfortunately, there's a finite space for the market to grow inside, so a soft cap is hit. Increased investmens stop giving returns the way they used to and competition gets tougher, even for the megacorps. The solution is more money to stay competitive, usually thrown at the simplest/safest aspect (marketing/art). Unfortunately, now the market is approaching the hard cap and no money in the world can expand the market further. The solution now is to increase prices. We are here. The next event is the collapse, when no one can neither compete nor make a profit. The consumers can't pay the asking price and the companies can't improve the value proposition without losing money. Next, the market crashes. Any day now.

Fuck, I misread it.

No, the market isn't going to crash. The video game market is just going to mature (in the economic sense, not the game journo sense). In fact, it may have already done so. At that point, there will be stability, since publishers will have no choice but to acknowledge that they're seeing flat rates of return. Hopefully that will be the catalyst to decrease game budgets to a sustainable size, especially marketing budgets.

I'm pretty sure that's what a RAM expansion still costs for an Apple computer.

Honestly, though, as someone living on minimum wage, I don't understand the issue. I think most folk are just retards who don't know how to manage money with simple care.

...

Depends on where you live. If you're financially retarded, you're going to have a pretty low net income, no matter what your pay is. But a lot of places have minimum wages low enough, and prices high enough, that getting by is hard, or even impossible.

Fair enough.
If you are a cityfag, or you are living in a shithole like California, you deserve what you get, though.

Like I posted before, if we just tied minimum wage to inflation and a local price index, the problem would be solved.

Or, we could just get rid of shitholes like large cities, and states like commiefornia.
Which'd also turn benefit in quite a large number of other areas.

Regardless, that wouldn't help. In the case of California and such places, the high price is due to shitty law, mostly, that makes things like food, power, water, and shelter pricey. In the case of large cities, it's typically more of a space issue. Either way, raising the minimum wage would only serve to increase costs of living in these areas.

If you make McDonald's pay 15$ an hour for their employees, you shouldn't be surprised if their burgers are 5$, basically.

using make-up is dishonest.

The burgers are already $5.

Big cities are useful, since they're the best place to do business in. Financial and industrial centers tend to be best served by cities, for example. Low-density rural areas are best for things like agriculture, mining, and other land-dependent (rather than capital-dependent) work. Also,
Geology will do that all on its own. :^)
The point of tying a minimum wage to a price index is that you're really setting a minimum purchasing power that's already proportional to the overall prices in that area, so you wouldn't get ever-escalating prices. While it would still be more expensive in absolute terms to live in cities, just like it is now (i.e., you pay more dollars for the same services than you would in a rural area), you're also getting paid more, in a fixed ratio.

Women kind of need eyeliner to look alright. The rest is mostly unnecessary.

But there would be extremely limited class mobility unless people start working further and further away from home. I'd honestly take a more indirect approach and overhaul the education system in order to support students in their strongest areas rather than their weak ones and get rid of stupid shit like summer break.

Depends on what you're carrying in it and why. Also depends on the satchel.
That's a homeless suspicion point, homie.
Gay, and false advertising.
The only colors anybody should dye their hair is naturally occuring hues for their race. Anything else is turbo gay.
It's not, but it's insanely retarded. Enjoy your skin cancer.

There already is. That's a problem that can't be fixed by the minimum wage.
But yeah, education reform would be helpful, too. I'd personally like to see more trade schools. Going to a university is seen as the culturally appropriate thing to do after high school, but it's unnecessary for most jobs. It's because of shit like that that there's a shortage of plumbers and electricians.

What, seriously? Where? Last I went, at least to Wendy's, they still had the little 1$ burgers they always do.

Industrial centers have been moving away from those areas for a while now. While cities are good for large numbers of workers, thanks mostly to laws and other such bothersome nonsense, those factories have had to move so far out, most city people can't effectively work there anyway, as most of them do not own cars. Now a days, at least around where I am, most manufacturing is done outside cities, or otherwise on the outskirts of relatively small ones.
Keep in mind, here: I'm mostly referring to large cities, when I talk this sort of thing. Places like New York, or Chicago.

The problem with typing this nonsense to this socalled 'price-index' is that the cost of living goes up with higher bottom wages.
You can't have a cheap store when everyone inside gets 15$ an hour. This applies to any commodity provided within that area of which requires employees to manage, dispense. maintain, or otherwise produce.
If I pay my employee 5$, the product costs me 5$ to make, 5$ to ship, and I sell it for 20$, I make 5$. But, if I have to pay my employee 15$, I have to increase the price of my product in order to still make money. If everyone has to do this, nothing is cheaper, and the cost of living goes up.

Depends on the satchel, but nobody's ever said anything negative about mine. I've actually got quite a number of compliments of it.
Although, honestly, if you're the type of guy to give much a shit about what is "fashionable", you're probably a homosexual anyway. Not to say you shouldn't dress nice, but a collared shirt and some khaki cargos works perfectly fine for most every event. Just don't dress like some homeless shit, or like some tight-pants homosexual.

Anyway, mine looks fairly similar to this one.

Progress is leading to automation, which makes good cheaper, but also destroys jobs.

As an example the Trucking industry employs ~3 million americans but self driving trucks will likely destroy at least half of those jobs, and the ones that stay are going to need higher levels of education.

Globalization of labor also means workers have no leverage in negotiations, since if the workers start demanding higher wages they'll outsource the work to a poorer, more desparate place.

As an actual statistic, the profit margin for Wal-Mart is only 1-2%. Which means for every dollar spent as Wal-Mart the company makes 1-2 cents.

Of course no one talks about profit margins because then people might actually realize that corporations arent actually evil.

Well, industrial work is largely done in Asian sweatshops now. But a well-planned city with good public transportation and a well-placed industrial district is still the best locale for them–not because of laws, but because, like you said, there are a large number of workers who live nearby, and the scale of production is determined less by the amount of land and more by the amount and type of machinery.
In a city like LA, which is all spread out to accommodate personal car ownership, the advantage of being a big city is lost. But places like New York or Chicago still have that advantage, even though outsourcing has killed industry there (though that's another issue entirely).
I'm not saying the minimum wage should do anything more than it's supposed to: provide a wage that's just enough for a person to survive and live reasonably. Yes, if you raise a minimum wage with the intention of improving everyone's standard of living, rather than using it to allow everyone the basic necessities, it will cause complications.
That's why, if we did what I want and tied it to a price index, it would have to vary much more than it currently does. Basically, instead of there being a single minimum wage that varies by state, it would have to vary by city (or county).
That's offset by the fact that consumers have more money to spend. Remember that the converse is true as well: if wages are incredibly low (as in, lower than they legally can be right now), businesses' income is reduced because people can't afford to buy the products being produced.

Automation is a good thing in the long run, since it expands production. But in the short term, yes, it causes problems. Eventually (I'm talking centuries into the future), the production of all (or nearly all) basic necessities will be either fully or mostly automated–which is a good thing, but it also means that people won't be working jobs for money anymore, and they'll simply decide what the automated machines should be programmed to produce, and in what quantities. Every little step we take toward that future is a good thing for humanity in the long run, even if it causes problems for us now.
This, on the other hand, is always bad.

Some places do better, some places do worse, yeah. WalMart's a good example of a place what would raise prices, though.

I know that Dominoes at the store level does pretty low, at least as far as what goes to the owner. There's a rather large load of small fees going to different things that seem to hurt the most, overall. The price of replacement equipment, especially drains it.

But, like I said, due to the laws that's shifting rather quickly to smaller areas that are more spread-out. People in these areas have cars, and so do not have to rely on public transport. Additionally, they're typically willing to work at a lot less pay, thanks to lower cost of living, as well as lessened job competition.

If we're talking 'bare minimum', the current minimum wage should already provide that. Even in high cost of living areas. Though, I'd be perfectly fine with it being a local government matter, if that's what you suggest. If there's one thing I find absolutely disgusting, it's a federal mandate on an area as diverse economically as the United States.
I wouldn't tie it to anything, in any case. That's just asking for trouble, as it rises exponentially. 'Least, if we're talking the typical "bear minimum" people act like is the bear minimum,

And that's offset by the fact that companies are no longer making profit.
People having more dosh in their pocket won't matter much if everything's gotta raise in price.
You are right, by all means: Too low money means not a lot can be bought. But, then, if that's due to the price per labor being lower, the products will lower along with that, as there's room for it. If the products being produced cost less to produce, the price will reflect that, just as if they cost more to produce, they will be more expensive.

If I make a dollar a day, and an apple is 1$, I can buy one apple. If I make 1000$ a day, and an apple is 1000$, I still can only buy one apple.

I found a picture of you user, you still look gay

Yeah, no, I'm not some scrawny little ((white)) faggot wearing a shitter's striped shirt, tucked in at that, with rolled up fucking sleves, and tight bitchboy pants, all topped off with fucking slippers for shoes like some kind of ass-loving homosexual
Seriously, mate, you could've at least found someone what didn't intentionally dress like a queer.

I'm 38, and I started with Pong, arcade games, and the Atari 2600, and I have a PS4 keeping my DS and my phone warm on my desk. Hell, there are fewer systems released on the US that I don't own, than I do. Only things I don't have are any of the Wonderswan or Neo Geo Pocket systems, no versions of the PSP after I gave mine to a friend, no 3DS, WiiU, or XBONE. I also don't have the Jaguar or Lynx, but I have multiple 3DOs, a Neo Geo, every Sega system, and even the goddamn Game.com.

Make McDonald's pay $15 an hour, and they'll unleash all automated menus and payment kiosks, like some artsy-fartsy gas stations do, and only have two or three employees per store to operate the fryers and wrap the sandwiches.

Correctamundo. This is why most of the jobs in the US are fucking entry-level service jobs. Call centers and restaurants. Anything more advanced than this has a line of people with useless degrees wrapping around the block waiting for the current staff to die and open up some positions. Programming/bugfixing is outsourced, most logistical shit like inventory management and product distribution is outsourced, electronic engineering is outsourced. If it can be done cheaper by slaves in India, Mexico, and China, it will be, no matter how poorly the job gets done. The bar for "good enough" is so low that you need a shovel to see it.

Messenger bags and the like look stupid, unless you're carrying around a full size laptop and accessories for onsite tech-work and diagnostics, but the heavy shit should be kept in your vehicle anyway. Maybe get a tac-pack so you can operate operationally?

Do you really trust the government with the money supply?

If you think the issue is WHO controls the money and not that the money is controlled by one unchecked figure in the first place. I have bad news for you.
We need a gold backed currency so that nobody can just on a whim create 'value' out of thin air whenever and wherever they want it.

Except then the power eventually accumulates in the hands of the few who hold the majority of gold.

Same shit. We already have the power accumulated in the hands of the few who hold the majority of the money.

kike