This doesn't make sense at all to me. They're comparing income in constant 2022 dollars with the CPI. That's saying "if we adjusted historical salaries for inf

This doesn't make sense at all to me. They're comparing income in constant 2022 dollars with the CPI. That's saying "if we adjusted historical salaries for inflation, then assumed that the constant 2022 dollar numbers were actually nominal numbers for each point in history, then people would've been able to buy much more stuff back then". Which is true, but not very meaningful. The whole point of the constant 2022 dollar adjustment is to back out the effect of inflation. If 2020 average salaries in 2022 dollars were $44.2K, and 1970 average salaries in 2022 dollars were $24.6K then 2020 workers have 80% higher purchasing power for whatever basket is used for the deflator.