The government tells us that we are all getting richer all the time but when I look at young families today they do not look much richer than young families 20 years ago. Why does my experience disagree with the government? The government use figures such as the Retail Price Index and Consumer Price Index to "adjust" past incomes in such a way that people in the past always look poorer. Go back more than 20 years and these figures become surreal, for example the figures say that the average household now earns about twice as much in "real terms" as the average household in 1970. Is it really credible that the young couple of 1970 were half as rich as the young couple of today? Try imagining an average, modern young couple with two kids. Like most couples in this position they are budgeting and have very little surplus money. Now take away half their income so that they are as rich as we are told people were in 1970 - no, it cannot be easily done, they ...