alt Hacker News>I have a hard time with this perspective. It's hard to measure. The quality difference of housing and healthcare in particular has increased dramatically in the US over the years and our minimum expectations have risen quite a bit as technology has progressed.
People live a reality everyday, "hard to measure" or not, and that's not about the "quality difference of housing and healthcare" increasing dramatically, it's them becoming stratospherically expensive...
Define stratospherically and then compare against outcomes across generations from the silent generation to today.
Life expectancy, cancer mortality, heart disease mortality, infant mortality, infectious disease, high school and college completion, social safety nets, houses w/ a/c, indoor plumbing, w/d, refrigeration... Life for those in the lowest quintile of income is arguably better today than it has ever been despite raging inequality.
Just because things were historically cheaper as a percentage of income, which isn't clearly true across all categories in that timeline, it doesn't mean quality of life was materially better.