Inflation & CPI

A general admission ticket to Bruce Springsteen's 1985 born in the USA Tour cost $17.50. The same Springsteen Tour in 2024 had average resale prices above $700, with floor seats at Madison Square Garden crossing 2000. The headline conclusion is that Springsteen tickets are now 40 times more expensive than they were 40 years ago. The headline is wrong by half. Perhaps that same 40 years, almost everything else got more expensive too. A loaf of bread, a liter of milk, a Sunday newspaper, a movie ticket, a haircut, and a basic car repair all rose substantially. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks a basket of typical consumer purchases every month and reports the average change. Between 1985 and 2024, the Consumer Price Index roughly tripled.