I'm not even going into how they change official statistics arbitrarily on a particular time period, but the article itself says that "Dividends are excluded, s

I'm not even going into how they change official statistics arbitrarily on a particular time period, but the article itself says that "Dividends are excluded, so the chart only shows capital gains. The dividend yield of the S&P is running near 2%." So, 1.9% above inflation plus 2% dividend yield, plus 2.3% current CPI, plus 2.7% "shadow CPI" (the number is from that article you posted) you get a 9% return. That means that facebook should be worth more, not less (since you are discounting at a lower rate).