At 8:30 this morning, the hard-working statisticians at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington issued their report on consumer prices in November 2009. It showed that the average price of consumer goods and services rose by 1.8% between November 2008 and November 2009. That’s the inflation rate.

But what about the price of individual items–like televisions, say? According to the BLS, the average price of televisions has actually plummeted by 28% over the last year, even while all sorts of other goods and services have been increasing in price. So that giant flat screen TV that you’ve been wanting–much, much cheaper.

In fact, the price of TVs has been falling for years. In 2006, the average price of a 23-inch LCD TV was $752, according to research firm iSuppli. Today, at the end of 2009, the average price of a 23-inch LCD set is $451. That’s a big drop!

Now, the BLS has been tracking the price of TVs since the 1950s and 1960s. Here’s a chart of the price of televisions over the last 40 years.

This chart shows that the price of televisions was basically flat until the early 1980s. It may be no coincidence that prices started to drop right even as imports of televisions were soaring.