Gold is not "money." Gold is a commodity, like oil, wheat, sugar, or any other good. It isn't "money," because money is a medium of exchange, and you cannot go to a store and pay for the goods you wish to purchase with a hunk of gold any more than you can pay with a bag of sugar or a drum of oil. You have to convert the good to dollars first, which can be used anywhere for purchases. Gold may be a good store of value, in your opinion, but that does not make it money.
And yes, Matthew, of course the official inflation figures factor in everything you mentioned. Inflation isn't measured based on what a "package" of sausage costs at the grocery store. It based on an objective standard, such as weight. If the weight is less, and price remains the same, of course inflation has occurred, and is accounted for. There's nothing nefarious about companies doing this, it is simply a marketing tool.
Generally speaking, across the entire economy, and not just based on the price of a single commodity (gold), the minimum wage has about 46% less purchasing power than it did in 1968 (the minimum wage's peak), and is basically equivalent to the statistical mean of the minimum wage's purchasing power since it was first introduced to 2013.