Noah Smith shared a thought-provoking post on service costs in the US.
It started with a famous chart that many of us have likely seen about how service costs seemed to be exploding even while the cost of goods was coming down.
Interestingly, these service costs seem to be leveling off. This is spending on healthcare.
Also hospital services.
Medical costs have slowed down too.
College tuition has also leveled off.
While it is hard to pinpoint why with trends like this, it is likely that markets have reached some form of equilibrium. There’s only so much a student is willing to pay for college after a point.
It also helps that labor has also been more productive over time.
This doesn’t mean all services are in a good place – childcare has gotten expensive for example.
But these charts point to a good outcome for the quality of life for normal people.
And that’s a good thing.
