Comparison of 1996 game and console prices to today.

[Baalzamon]

SvennoJ said:

Blouge said:

I can compute some other values:

Based on the True Money Supply (i.e. the increase in the quantity of dollars), I get an answer of about $632:

http://mises.org/markets.asp#More%20on%20TMS

Based on the price of gold, I get $655.

Based  on the price of crude oil, I get $642.

In all of these cases, the value is much higher than the $293 you gave.

Of course, there is no objective means to compare someone's valuation of a dollar today with someone's valuation of it in 1996. But I surely wouldn't use the BLS - data as they intentionally strive to give false inflation figures for political goals. The three latter values, $632 - $655, seem most trustworthy IMHO.

That makes more sense. I remember buying cheap supermarket bread for the equivalent of CAD 0.56 (1990). Nowadays the cheap bread is CAD 1.88
Not far off from this site http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/70yearsofpricechange.html

Luxury goods have become a lot cheaper compared to daily necessities. Back then having a 2nd tv was a rarity. Nowadays people have 2-3 cars, tv in every room, multiple consoles, pc, laptops, tablets, smart phones.

You do realize that $640 price now is more in line with 7% annual inflation since 1996 accross the board. Just because certain items cost that much more than 1996 does not mean they all do, or we would be looking at bananas for $1.50/lb (when they are still $.50/lb), milk for nearly $5/gallon (when I get it for about $2.50/gallon), a car equivalent to a Subaru Legacy Wagon would be about $50,000 (I just bought a really nice brand new Chevy Cruze for $16,000, even a much larger car would have only run me about $20,000).

Sure, I can look at individual items I have bought, and I will certainly be able to find ones that have gone up 3, 4, even 5x what the price was when I was a child, but I can also find items that literally haven't changed a single bit since I was a child, or have gotten cheaper.

You also need to consider when looking at inflation other factors. For example, the huge rise in housing prices has a lot more to do with much larger houses than it has to do with super high inflation on housing. With vehicles, the vehicles we buy today are much better than the ones we bought in 1996 (significantly more features, much safer, better gas mileage, etc.). Computers have consistently gotten cheaper, yet continue to get better and better.

If 7% inflation was a reality, then just about everybody would be massively worse off now than in 1996, when I would argue houses have significantly more flexible spending (adjusted for inflation) now than they had in 1996.