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I drove 45 minutes one-way to high school during my junior and senior years in '93-'95. Gas cost .99/1.09/1.19 during that time. It was fifty miles per day, in the mountains, and I got about 15MPG. So that's about $3/day or $15/week. Now it would cost nearly $12/day or $60/week.

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I don't think it's all about money.

I live in NYC in large part to avoid driving. If I moved to Kirkland the lower rent would easily pay to lease, fuel, insure and maintain a luxury car, with cash left over. I'm staying here. So are my 8 million neighbours.

Luckily minimum wage has gone from $4.25/hr to $7.25/hr to keep up as expenses quadrupled. Err, um...

It would be interesting to know how much the average income has increased, more than minimum wage, and the effect of inflation on other prices would also be useful.

I'm not saying that it would lead to a different conclusion, but just that it's data you can't ignore when comparing prices across a 20 years span.

If you change "increased" to "decreased", you can find this info pretty easy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Median_US_household_income...

If you're looking for personal income rather than household income, there's a graph for that as well.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6c/Historical_med...

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