Everything costs more than it used to.
The Real Price of Everything
A stamp. A gallon of gas. A year of college. The numbers only go up.
Scroll ↓ and watch the single story come apart.
What follows is an inflation-adjusted price chart that transforms as you scroll, indexed to 100 in 1980. First it teaches the idea on a single first-class stamp: its price climbed in dollars, but once you subtract inflation the stamp barely moved. Then it applies that lens to nine everyday things at once, and they split in two. The things you can choose fall below the inflation line or hold near it: televisions and clothing drop steeply, gas and eggs swing but land near or below where they began, and a stamp holds. The things you cannot opt out of rise far above it: college tuition climbs the most, then healthcare, then childcare, then rent. After the chart, you can pick any of the nine and guess where its real price lands today.
A first-class stamp went from 13¢ in 1976 to 68¢ today. Classic proof that everything gets pricier.
But every price rose in those years. That rise is inflation. The shared tide.
Subtract the tide and the stamp barely moved. It did not get more expensive. Your dollar got smaller.
Now apply that to everything at once.
It was never one number. Strip out inflation and the single story splits. Some things fell. Some climbed.
Gas swings with every crisis and boom. Through all the noise, in real terms a gallon costs less than it did in 1980. $1.25 then · $3.45 now
A television is the clearest case. Adjusted for inflation, and for how much more it does, the price falls off the bottom of the chart. Constant-quality: a 2024 4K set measured against a 1960 console.
Clothing gets quietly cheaper, decade after decade. Constant-quality apparel basket, not the shirt on the rack.
Eggs are the noisy one. Bird-flu years spike the line hard, then it falls back. Strip out inflation and the story is mostly weather: eggs land about where they began.
College tuition is the line everyone expects. In real terms it climbs, and keeps climbing.
Medical care never stops rising. Not a spike. A slope that steepens.
Rent is the one you cannot opt out of. Measured as what people actually pay to keep a roof, it rises across the whole window. CPI rent of a primary residence.
Childcare arrives late, around 1990, and climbs the fastest of all. The newest pressure hits hardest.
One axis. Nine everyday things, adjusted for inflation. The things you can choose got cheaper. The things you cannot opt out of rose fastest.
Now you try.
You watched them split. You never saw exactly how far.
You watched all nine split apart. You never saw exactly how far. Pick a line to pin where it lands today.