This Is Common Knowledge, Right?

I never know what to think of my fellow countrymen/women. Sometimes I'm enamored of their ability to be giving and forgiving- the capacity for compassion and mercy. Then other times I'm dumbstruck at how little they actually know about anything, and the terrible harmful decisions that they make, or allow to be made in their name. Help me out here- tell me that this is common knowledge...

I was not an econ major, and every lesson I've learned about money and finance has been the hard way- and in the past number of years I've tried to change that. I'm looking at the market today and I know the vulgar intentions behind these actions, but I don't know that everyone is seeing it. The Federal Reserve (and seriously, if you don't know about the FED, spend some time on Google over this sham outfit) dropped another half point today. This is meant to forestall the inevitable drop until after the election. They'll keep dropping it until November if they have to. Secondarily, by doing this, they are devaluing the dollar in astonishing ways.

Consider- the minimum wage for 1979, when adjusted for today is $16.50 an hour, or $34,320 annually (*my source is Bureau of Labor and Statistics, as quoted by MarketWatch.com). Jimmy Carter isn't looking so bad in hindsight, eh? Now it can be hard to contrast this even using Cheeseburger Economics (a measurement of the economy based on historical retail cheeseburger costs), so again I'll mention gold. It's something like $930 an ounce these days. And the thing is, gold is no more or less valuable than it ever was. There is the same amount as has been around for years- it's the value of the dollar that is in freefall. It's back to parity against the Canadian Dollar, it takes about a buck and a half to buy a Euro, and two bucks for a Pound- and they are down as well against gold.

I'm not intending to prattle on about macroeconomics, or to inspire fear, but everyone is hip to what's really happening here- yes?