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The minimum wage is not relevant as very few people make it. Wage earners at the top, bottom, and middle can afford a better (materially speaking) quality of life in the USA than at any time in the past:

https://data.epi.org/wages/hourly_wage_percentiles/line/year...

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This doesn't seem to take into account the price of land or the price of education or the price of healthcare, therefore claiming that they can afford a better quality of life it's highly misleading, if this is taking such things into account I would like to know exactly how.

All of those are part of the basket of goods and services tracked in the Consumer Price Index

Doesn't the CPI produce an average estimate of what everyone is already paying for housing as opposed to the full sticker price for a new entrant? Meaning if most people are living in houses they bought in the past at much lower prices and interest rates, then the CPI will be heavily weighted towards their costs as opposed to the much smaller fraction of renters and first-time buyers.

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