Inflation Is a Historic Reality. $100 in groceries purchased in 2004 cost approximately $135.82 worth of the same groceries in 2019. That’s a 26% reduction of a dollar’s buying power in the past 15 years.
Most CPI (Consumer Price Index) numbers you see are based on $100 worth of purchases made in 1982-84. For instance, if you see a CPI-W number for June 2019 of 249.747, it means that it would take about $249.75 in today’s dollars to purchase what would have cost $100 in 1982.