A new house in 1970 cost around $23,000, the average income per year was around $9,350, and the cost of a gallon of gas was 36 cents. In California the minimum wage in March of 1974 was around $2.00 before the old minimum wage was $1.65 it went up around 35 cents. In L.A. the board proposed that they would raise the cost of minimum wage would go up to $15 in todays economy it'd still be hard to make it through with $15 my mom gets paid $12.50 an hour and we barely make it through on two pay checks the cost of our apartment is $850 plus all the utilities like electricity, gas, water, and other luxuries it gets pretty expensive. It's even hard to get by on food even with food stamps because with the cost of everything there is no money to get the food we need to help sustain my family of 6 people, also with the increase of minimum wage, you'd still have to worry about all the people that would get laid off to make this increase.