[heterodoxxed]

One aspect I'm fascinated with is the way that consumer goods are continually dropping in price offsets the increase in necessities. We get a supercomputer in our pocket for $40 a month, but rent has ballooned. We can have hundreds of video games for free but we'll never own a home. And so on. We all get wikipedia for free, but a college degree is painfully expensive in a world that doesn't let you apply for jobs on the strengths of self-education.

As someone on here said years ago, "I love my iphone but I worry about health insurance."

What good is cheap frivolities if the necessary building blocks of life are skyrocketing.

[Gibbon1]

My dad's crusty friends refer to that as deflation for things you want, inflation for things you need.

Also official reasoning about housing costs ignores that there are huge variations in that prices people have to pay to house themselves. The focus on average market rates hides the reality on the ground.