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Comment by myth_buster | Hacker News Reader

  In 1983 2 million was a shit ton of money. 
  By comparison, in 2015, it would be around 5 million

I expected a difference of an order of magnitude or more...

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Current data is only available till 2014. In 2014, the relative worth of $2,000,000.00 from 1983 is:

  $4,750,000.00  using the  Consumer Price Index  
  $4,060,000.00  using the  GDP deflator  
  $4,660,000.00  using the  unskilled wage  
  $5,240,000.00  using the  Production Worker Compensation  
  $7,000,000.00  using the  nominal GDP per capita  
  $9,540,000.00  using the  relative share of GDP

It ranges from $4 to 9.5 million. [1]

1. http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/result.php?year_sour...

1983 slips into the very tail-end of a high US inflationary period. Inflation has mostly been relatively low since. You can use any of the many online CPI calculators to calculate value of money. (Of course, it's only one measure of spending power change but, in this case, it's probably the most relevant one.)

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