In 1924, the famous novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post entitled ?How to live on $36,000 a year?. In it he considered how he and his wife had managed to spend all of that very high income without saving any of it. The CPI in 1924 was 17 and the CPI in 2008 was 2015. What income would you have needed in 2008 to have had the same purchasing power that Fitzgerald?s $36,000 had in 1924.