OK, let's try this again.
Individual products do not track well to the CPI. And it's not the job of the CPI to say that "any product that costs more than it did in 1970 (in adjusted dollars) is a rip-off."
That belief ignores dozens (if not hundreds) of complicated factors including disposable income, wages, currency values, the product's popularity and sales rates, the price range of the product, taxes, consumption rates, tariffs, imports vs exports....
The CPI is a broad measure drawn from a "basket" of goods. The likelihood of one specific product perfectly matching the CPI is as unlikely as a company's growth rates to perfectly match GDP, or its stock price to perfectly match the S&P 500.
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Originally Posted by HamsterRage
Check. You'll see that books have outstripped CPI for virtually any time period you care to pick over that 40 year time span.
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Uh huh. If you average out the increase in CPI from 1970 to 2009, the annual rate is approximately 4.5%. (I.e. start with $1 in 1970, increase your amount by 4.5% per year, and in 2009 you'll have $5.56.)
What does it take to roughly double that ($1 in 1970, to $9.70 in 2009), as books have done? An annual average increase of 5%.
Wow. Books outpaced inflation by an annual rate of 0.5%. What a pack of thieves.
Of course that does not in any way reflect the reality. Inflation was very high in some years, low in others; book prices rose much faster than CPI in some years, and not in others.