Why the floor still falls when you don't trust CPI.

The short version

CPI is a lagging survey. M2 is the actual money.

Every time the Fed or Treasury creates a dollar, it lands somewhere. M2 is where it lands. CPI is a supermarket clipboard survey that catches up years later. If you want the honest picture of how much the dollar you're holding has lost, don't look at CPI — look at M2. Every serious money person you know already does.

The numbers, straight from FRED

Since January 1985.

Ratio: M2 grew ~3.1× faster than CPI. The government's inflation number captured about one dollar of debasement for every three that actually happened. Pulled from FRED on 2026-07-12, series IDs above — verify it yourself in ten seconds.

Why the lag exists

New money arrives in a specific order.

Print a dollar today and it does not hit grocery shelves tomorrow. It travels. Every time. In this order:

1. Stocks and bonds — first. Asset prices react in weeks. Every QE cycle looks like a bull market before anyone feels "inflation." The people closest to the printer get paid first.
2. Real estate — second. Cap rates compress, mortgages get cheap, prices climb over 1–2 years. This is where the "housing is up" narrative comes from — and it's mostly the printer, not scarcity.
3. Wages and durable goods — third. Takes a full cycle to renegotiate. If you felt behind in 2022, this is why.
4. Groceries and services — last. The CPI-visible layer. Sometimes 3–5 years behind the print. This is the layer the government measures. Draw your own conclusions.

It isn't a conspiracy. It's a definition. CPI is measuring the last mile of a signal that already moved through the whole map.

What that means for the chart

The 1985 basket in honest 2025 dollars.

On the main site the 1985 millionaire basket is priced at $850K/yr in CPI-real 2025 dollars. Deflated by M2 instead of CPI, the same basket is closer to ~$2.6M/yr. The 1985 world was a smaller-money world; a millionaire back then was a much rarer creature than a "millionaire" today.

Both curves converge at 2025. Today's nominal cost is today's nominal cost. And both curves hit the same 2036 crossover — because the forward projection is Wright's law compounding on physical goods, not a monetary story. The crossover date doesn't move. The math is different, the destination is the same.

The upshot

You kept purchasing power. Technology multiplied it.

If you own a house or an S&P index fund and you feel wealthier than in 2000 — check the M2 line first. You mostly kept up with the printer. That's fine. That's what those assets are for.

The real compounding gains since 1985 are in the categories where technology beat the printer — compute, connectivity, media, mobility, expert advice, translation, navigation, publishing. Those categories fell so fast in real terms that the "consumption bundle" of a 1985 millionaire is now median-household reach and getting cheaper by the year.

That's the whole thesis. The floor keeps falling in the categories where humans got better at making things. The rest is money-supply theater. And the destination — a working parent in 2036 living the 1985 millionaire's life — is on the calendar either way.

The printer runs. Wright's law runs faster. That's the whole game.

The math checked out. Now what?

Come help us accelerate the good version.

You made it through the receipts. You already know CPI understates it and Wright's law outruns it anyway. The next move isn't more reading — it's building. Two doors in.