Since 2000, almost everything open to competition got radically cheaper — TVs, software, toys, clothing. Almost everything shielded from it got radically dearer — hospitals, college, child care. “Inflation” was never a single number.
Every category begins together at zero in the year 2000. Press play and watch them fan apart. The red lines are sectors insulated from market competition; the teal lines are sectors fully exposed to it.
The full 2000–2024 price change for each category, ranked top to bottom. The dashed guides mark overall inflation (+82%) and average wage growth (+115%) — anything above wages got more expensive faster than paychecks grew.
The pattern is not random. It tracks one variable almost perfectly: whether buyers, sellers, and prices were free to respond to each other.
These are price indices, not measures of value for money. The BLS adjusts goods like televisions for quality — a 2024 TV is vastly better than a 2000 model, which deepens the measured price drop. Health care and education improved in quality too, but those gains are far harder to price. The chart shows what happened to the sticker; it does not, on its own, settle whether any sector delivers more for what you pay.
There is no single inflation rate for a life — only for a basket. Tell the calculator how you spend, and it builds your personal inflation rate from the real category data, then weighs it against your income.