Additionally, depending on what you're trying to measure, there are a variety of different sorts of ways to adjust for inflation. The CPI is a measure of consum

Additionally, depending on what you're trying to measure, there are a variety of different sorts of ways to adjust for inflation. The CPI is a measure of consumer prices, and used by the Fed as a target for inflation in order to maintain price stability, but there are others: http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ The CPI is flawed, of course, like any attempt to turn 300 million peoples' worth of purchases into a single number. The Federal Reserve itself thinks that it's a little bit on the high side, not doing enough to adjust for the changes that occur when better products are introduced or when people change their purchasing behavior (e.g. switching to generic products): http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/1997/may/bias-in-the-cpi-roughly-right-or-precisely-wrong/ http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic... > a lot of work (and tables) go into that number. Economics is a whole field of study.