You can learn a lot about the economy by playing Monopoly and tinkering with the standard rules.

To simulate the effects of artificially increasing the minimum wage for example, adjust the rules of Monopoly and increase the amount each player gets when they pass “Go” while leaving all other numbers the same. Increase to $300, $500, $1000, and $2000. You’ll find that the game fundamentally changes. It improves at first with $300 enabling more purchases and faster building. But as you continue increasing, the game starts to drag. In fact, there is a point where the game will never end because players have so much money they will never go bankrupt. To compensate, you’d have to increase the property, building, and penalty prices proportionally.

This proportional increase is exactly why simply raising the minimum wage doesn’t make things more affordable. Prices move to compensate with the new wage. You can see it by comparing prices across countries for equivalent goods. From Grok:

As of March 2026, Australia’s national minimum wage is $24.95 per hour and the cheapest 6-pack of beer is $18–$22

As of March 2026 in Virginia, the state minimum wage is $12.77 per hour. A 6-pack typically ranges from $8 to $12

Raising the minimum wage doesn’t make beer more affordable. Instead, the cheapest 6-pack of beer will always cost the equivalent of one hour of minimum wage work.



Another fun fact: Benjamin Franklin came to this same conclusion in his autobiography (emphasis mine):

The wealthy inhabitants oppos’d any addition, being against all paper currency, from an apprehension that it would depreciate, as it had done in New England, to the prejudice of all creditors. We had discuss’d this point in our Junto, where I was on the side of an addition, being persuaded that the first small sum struck in 1723 had done much good by increasing the trade, employment, and number of inhabitants in the province…The utility of this currency became by time and experience so evident as never afterwards to be much disputed; so that it grew soon to fifty-five thousand pounds, and in 1739 to eighty thousand pounds, since which it arose during war to upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds, trade, building, and inhabitants all the while increasing, tho’ I now think there are limits beyond which the quantity may be hurtful.