Why $100 Buys Less Every Year

Your groceries cost $5.86 in 1984. The same food costs $20.43 today. So did your paycheck keep up? We turn the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and official pay data into a race to show what really happened to your purchasing power and the cost of living. Prices led for years, but since 2001 pay for most workers has stayed ahead: an hour of work now buys about 19% more than in 1984, even though each dollar buys far less. We also look at why college tuition rocketed while TV prices fell, what the Federal Reserve's 2% inflation target means, how inflation compares around the world, and why "inflation is down" doesn't mean prices are falling. Which price rise have you noticed the most? Tell us in the comments. Chapters 0:00 The great race: prices vs your paycheck 1:05 How far did prices really go? 1:56 Has your pay kept up with inflation? 2:59 Why some prices skyrocket while others fall 3:44 The Fed's 2% inflation target 4:23 Inflation around the world 4:45 Why slower inflation doesn't mean cheaper 5:20 When will today's prices look cheap? Sources U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Average Price Data (AP), U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/average... (data retrieved 2026-10-16) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted, 1982-84=100: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/ (data retrieved 2026-10-16) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics (CES), not seasonally adjusted: https://www.bls.gov/ces/ (data retrieved 2026-10-16) World Bank, World Development Indicators: Inflation, consumer prices (annual %) (FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG), JPN: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CP... (data retrieved 2026-10-16) World Bank, World Development Indicators: Inflation, consumer prices (annual %) (FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG), DEU: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CP... (data retrieved 2026-10-18) World Bank, World Development Indicators: Inflation, consumer prices (annual %) (FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG), MEX: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CP... (data retrieved 2026-10-18) World Bank, World Development Indicators: Inflation, consumer prices (annual %) (FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG), TUR: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CP... (data retrieved 2026-10-18) Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/econom... (retrieved 2026-10-16) Assumptions Example basket: U.S. average prices (BLS), one of each item, not a household's full shopping. Method: 1984 annual average vs the latest 12-month average, using 11 published months because October 2025's CPI was not published. Pay = average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers, most of the private-sector workforce ("pay for most workers"). Then = the 1984 average; now = the average of the 12 months to September 2026. Pay after prices = average hourly pay divided by the CPI-U, as an index (the 1984 level = the start line); the race's gap follows it at one fixed scale. Price categories (tuition, medical care, housing, all groceries, new cars, clothing, toys, TVs) are BLS CPI-U indexes, not our basket. TV prices are for the same quality: the CPI adjusts for better TVs. The Federal Reserve's goal is measured with the PCE price index, not the CPI. Yearly price rise = CPI-U annual average over the year before. World: World Bank consumer price inflation (Japan, Germany, Mexico, Turkey) and BLS CPI-U (US), yearly averages, 1995 to 2021. Doubling time = the average yearly rise since 1984 kept constant: an 'if', not a forecast. Illustration, not advice: this video explains how prices and pay work. It is not financial advice. The narrator is an AI voice (ElevenLabs), designed for this channel; script and numbers by the creator. The animation is drawn by code; the video itself has no AI-generated images. The thumbnail art is AI-made (Google's Nano Banana); its words and numbers are added by code. Every number is computed from the official data listed above. Music: Epidemic Sound ("Some Kind of Friend (Instrumental Version)" by Vicki Vox; "Find a Way (Instrumental Version)" by The Eastern Plain; "Caught Up In A Dream (Instrumental Version)" by Loving Caliber; "Summer City (Instrumental Version)" by Chasing Madison; "Delicate People (Instrumental Version)" by Go For Howell); sound effects: Epidemic Sound and made for this channel. #inflation #costofliving #consumerpriceindex