One of the misnomers is "cost of living". It should be called "price of living". With the income tax code, anti-union systems, "always low prices" and deflection factors used to depress the "cost of living" numbers, and the stock market riding waves of inflation that are unacknowledged, Americans really know the cost of nothing and the price of everything: except the price of people's lives. Even the upper castes who make 6 figure incomes don't know their own actual value: they accept the price they are paid, the taxes taken and secretive 'benefits' without knowing their own value in real numbers, then they pay the price of living without knowing the cost to the environment or to other people because those costs are externalized and deferred to government deficit spending or the destruction of poor people's places.

Arguments against raising minimum wages are part of this delusion of prices-as-value and price-as-cost.

Keeping people unaware of the real extraction from their lives is how they keep us from collecting pitchforks and torches (unionizing).

"My late husband used to say, 'The only way to make money from poor people is by keeping them poor'." -Topsy Lavish, "Making Money" by Terry Pratchett