re: One Out of Every 24 New York City Residents Is Now a Millionaire

To be equivalent to $1 million in 1980, you would need almost $4m today.

Now, cost of living is a weird thing - take consumer electronics - they tend to get better every year, but generally the absolute cost trends downward, at least slightly for most sorts of common items, over time. Cell phones may be bucking that trend, but still.

However, jump to the true big ticket items - houses and cars - that's off the charts and is almost an inflationary bubble all its own. Going back to 1980 again, the average price of a new car was about $7k. Today it is $47k, almost SEVEN times, over 1 1/2 times that of the overall inflation rate since then.

Houses? Same deal. Average price of a home was about $56k in 1980 and today it is $417k, again, around SEVEN times, over 1 1/2 that of overall inflation.

A lot goes into that. Of course, modern cars and houses have a lot more to offer than cars and houses in 1980. At the end of the day, however, all of this is obviously unsustainable for more than just a couple of years (if that), and a hard correction is inbound.