I worked at McDonald's when I was still in high school, back in the '80s, after school and on weekends. I was paid what was then the minimum wage – $3.35 per hour. A Big Mac cost about $1.50.

It looked pretty good, too.

That's the way it was.

How is it now?

The minimum wage is $7.25 per hour- about twice what it was in the '80s –  And a Big Mac costs about $5.70 cents – about four times what it cost in the '80s. It doesn't look so good anymore, either. But the take-home point is you'd have to work about an hour at McDonald's to be able to afford to eat at McDonald's today.

Assuming you could afford to drive a car to work.

Back in the '80s, most teenagers had their own car because it was possible to buy one on a teenager's means. All it took was about $500 to buy an operable beater and – again – I know because I was there. Even adjusted for inflation – as the blase phrase goes, as if the deliberate devaluation of the buying power of money were some kind of natural, inevitable thing like aging – that $500 '80s beater car would be about $1,600 today. If you could find an operable car for that sum. A set of "inexpensive" tires typically cost as much today as we paid for a whole car back then.

We could afford gas, too.

Because back then, a gallon cost about $1. That made it financially feasible for 17-year-old kids working weekends and after-school at McDonald's to put 20 gallons of gas in the tank of their beater muscle car, with a V8 engine.