[dcolkitt]

> Meanwhile, concurrent with those changes, the cost of things that used to be "basics", like health care, higher education, and housing, have skyrocketed,

The economic data simply does not support your argument.

In aggregate healthcare only constitutes 8.1% of US household expenditures. Education only constitutes 2.3%. It's simply infeasible that inflation in segments constituting less than one tenth of household expenses has crippled the majority of US households. Especially given strong deflationary trends in autos, apparel, furniture, appliances, consumer household goods, electronics, phone service, natural gas, toys, and media. Which in aggregate represents over 30% of household expenditures.

Shelter at 19.2% is a major expenditure item. But you're wrong that there's been significant inflation. The median price per square foot of American housing has not increased in real terms since 1992. (HN tends to be grossly misinformed on this since the community is heavily concentrated in the ultra-expensive Bay Area.) And this doesn't even account for mortgage rates falling by 60% since 1990.

It's true that Americans on average spend more on housing. But that's because modern homes are substantially larger than they were a few decades ago. Moreover the price per square foot metric doesn't reflect significant aggregate quality improvements like central A/C, better fire safety, higher capacity electrical circuits, more bathrooms, higher ceilings, better insulation, attached garages, and swimming pools.

Altogether the housing story does not reflect your broader thesis. If Americans were feeling overwhelmed by out-of-control housing prices, they wouldn't keep buying bigger and bigger homes. Other statistics tell similar stories. A record number of people are getting cosmetic surgeries. If healthcare costs were crushing US consumers, we wouldn't expect huge growth in Americans choosing to have elective medical procedures. It'd be like claiming there's an ongoing food shortage, while obesity rates are rising.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/cex/2018/combined/age.pdf [2] https://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/soldmedavgppsf.pdf [3] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s... [4] https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-03/m-nps030719.php

[SQueeeeeL]

Big houses are all that's built and is on the market. You can't buy apartments in anywhere except New York and Seattle. They also cant't build mixed housing that isn't single family homes in most cities because of zoning laws.

[dcolkitt]

And I'm totally sympathetic to that argument. If it was up to me, I'd nuke all zoning laws. But there's no real evidence that these bigger homes are imposing any significant financial strain in aggregate. The percent of household expenditures spent on shelter has barely budged since 1990 (19.8% vs 17.7%)[1].

Maybe all else equal we'd prefer to use rising incomes and productivity to stay in the same size houses. It's definitely plausible. Comparatively expenditures on apparel have fallen by nearly 50% since 1990.

But what isn't plausible is OP's thesis that housing is making us poor. (Well at least in aggregate across the US, it is probably making Bay Area residents poor.) At most you can argue that zoning laws are making us spend a constant percent of our growing paychecks on proportionately bigger homes. For which we're no longer deriving much marginal benefit from the increased square footage.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/cex/1990/share/age.pdf

[danans]

> In aggregate healthcare only constitutes 8.1% of US household expenditures.

Why do you think is 8.1% a reasonable number? Meanwhile, average annual health insurance premiums for employer plans for the last 2 decades have gone way up [1].

A significant portion of that increase has been paid by the employer, masking the increase in costs significantly.

> Education only constitutes 2.3%.

Education expenditure here is being masked by the debt used to finance a great deal of it, from student loans, to credit cards and home equity loans (often on a parent's home) [2]

> The median price per square foot of American housing has not increased

People don't buy housing in units of square feet. They buy access to shelter for themselves and their families near work, educational, and other advancement opportunities. The price of that access has increased, even outside the Bay Area.

> the price per square foot metric doesn't reflect significant aggregate quality improvements like central A/C, better fire safety, higher capacity electrical circuits, more bathrooms, higher ceilings, better insulation, attached garages

Most of these features are commodified to the point that they aren't reflected in price differences much at all. What increases prices are exclusionary zoning laws designed to inflate property values.

> A record number of people are getting cosmetic surgeries

$16 billion spent on cosmetic surgery [3], out of $3 trillion spent on healthcare overall. That's .5%. The vast majority of people are not getting cosmetic surgery. It's statistically insignifcant compared to overall healthcare costs.

> It'd be like claiming there's an ongoing food shortage, while obesity rates are rising.

Except nobody claims that there is a calorie shortage. You're using a straw man.

1. https://www.kff.org/report-section/2018-employer-health-bene...

2. https://www.investopedia.com/student-loan-debt-2019-statisti...

3. https://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/press-releases/americans...