Which is irrelevant to the point. It doesn't make the other factor any less real, and its the other factor that I'm talking about. You can name all sorts of things that might be much bigger issues, but they don't make this point false.
It is not irrelevant. It not only makes the other factor less real, it negates it. People are not getting bigger, better, houses for their inflation adjusted incomes. They are getting smaller, worse houses. For significantly more $/quantity, $/quality, $/income, etc, they CAN choose to have bigger and better, but this is hardly an intelligent comparison. If you fail to normalise intelligently, you can believe any nonsense you like.
Where I will agree with your premise, is that in the areas where productivity has a large impact, things have gotten much better. Thus much of manufactured goods and technology we do have more & better of. Communications is the area where this is most visible IMO, and it has reached clear through the 3'rd world as well. However, in areas where productivity has not made great gains, things have not faired so well. Hence the cost of anything requiring skilled service (education, health care, etc) has seen significant inflation. House construction is somewhere in between (sans the real estate inflation), because stick frame construction has not gotten a whole lot more productive over the years, and the manufactured alternatives have proven poor value for various reasons. |
