Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
Picture this: You're walking down the grocery aisle in 2009. A carton of eggs costs about $1.60, and a pound of ground beef is $2.13. The typical home for sale across the street is about $214,000. Flash forward to today, and the prices for those same goods have shot up to $2.71, $5.47, and $412,000. Prices are up about 45% across the board. But the one thing that has stayed constant? The federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for 15 years.