Efforts to effect an increase on the national level – the first since 1996 – have been stalled in Congress. As hourly pay for employees mainly in so-called service industries (fast-food and restaurant servers; retail employees; gardeners and landscapers, etc.) creeps up toward the $10 level, a look back at how similar workers were compensated for their services a century ago provides some interesting perspective.

The popular British period costume drama "Downton Abbey," entering its fourth broadcast season on PBS in this country, has brought the subject of wealth inequality to the forefront of many viewers’ minds. Indeed, many economists in the U.S. and around the globe are debating how to cope with this daunting 21st-centure reality: the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer, much as they were during the Gilded Age 100 years ago. ^.

Pulitzer Price-winning journalist David Cay Johnston has written an eye-opening piece on this very subject for Al Jazeera America. In it, Johnston compares living and working conditions for mainly household servants (who evolved over time into today's hourly employees at McDonalds or WalMart) in the U.S. in the early-20th century and in 2014.

As Johnston points out, many more urban American families (roughly 1 in 45 households) employed full-time household help prior to the Great Depression and World War II than do today. Although the landed aristocracy depicted in "Downton Abbey" lived on a vastly grander scale than most American millionaires of the day, beloved fictional servants like Mrs. Patmore, Downton’s feisty cook, surely had their real-life counterparts in mansions and townhouses in New York, Philadelphia and other cities.

Although the series goes to great pains to depict the wide social and economic chasm between the "upstairs" residents of the house and the "downstairs" servant class, Mrs. Patmore and her co-workers appear to be earning a viable living wage.

Sadly, Johnston’s research indicates that today Mrs. Patmore and the rest of the Downton employees would likely find themselves flipping burgers or providing customer service of some kind. A real-life household cook in the U.S. 100 years ago would have been paid about $10/week in 1913 dollars – seemingly way less than an hourly service worker earns today. However, the 1913 employee was often provided with room and board and didn’t have to sacrifice large chunks of his/her paycheck to Social Security or income taxes; to say nothing of the costs of commuting, lodging and food.

To paraphrase a campaign slogan used to great effect by former President Reagan in the 1980s: "Mrs. Patmore, are you better off today than you were 100 years ago?" It would appear from Johnston’s article that the answer is a resounding "No."