Minimum WAGE!!!!!!!

In 1996, I was a 19 year old student at the University of Illinois who needed a little spending money and took a minimum wage job driving a van of audio/visual equipment around campus and setting it up in various buildings. When I took the job, I was making a whopping $4.75 an hour, the minimum wage at the time, and at some point, my hard work earned me a $0.25 raise, to an even five bucks an hour.

In 1997, I got another raise... this one, a federally mandated raise to $5.15.

As Bob Geiger points out, this was the last time the minimum wage was raised, a record length of time without an increase.

Right now, there's probably some kid driving around the University of Illinois campus making the same money I made, at the same job, nine years ago.