[ravenstine]

I can't find it at the moment, but I remember a graph that showed the price of goods over a period of something like 30 years. Things like clothes, food, gadgets, cars, etc., we're shown to have decreased in price. Things we actually need like education, medical care, and housing had risen astronomically. So even if the dollar itself doesn't inflate much, it still can have significantly less buying power, as you say. What's worse is the cheapness and ubiquity of gadgets serves to mask the problem by making everyone think they have more wealth than they really do.