Simple ShadowStats Smell Test

People who worry about inflation tend to point to shadowstats.com as a truer measure of inflation. They likely don't do this simple test to see how valid it is:

What was my income X years ago, what it is now, and is my standard of living reduced as much as this inflation measure says it should be?

I didn't move to the U.S. until 2003, and from a higher tax nation, so I'm going to start there. At that time my household income was about 100,000. Eyeballing the chart here, I can see what our income should be to keep up with the alternate inflation measure.

2003, 100,000
2004, +7.5%, 107,500
2005, +9.5%, 117,712
2006, +11%, 130,660
2007, +11%, 145,032
2008, +10%, 159,535
2009, +5.5%, 161,979
2010, +10%, 178,176
2011, +11%, 197,775

Our household income is much less than $197,775, which is what shadowstats claims we need just to keep up with inflation. Yet miraculously we feel much better off than we felt in 2003. That includes now having 2 kids we have to spend money on, and a larger house! Weird.

Incidentally, regular CPI says we need $123,309.24 a year to have roughly the same standard of living as in 2003. That seems more reasonable to me...