A lot of this has to do with marginal value. The cost of basic survival has gone way down - but in the process, it's freed up a lot of disposable income, so people build bigger, better, and yet less efficient ways of doing things to soak up that extra money.
Health care's perhaps the biggest example. A hundred years ago, millions of children died in infancy from things like measles, whooping cough, polio, etc. Now this has been wiped out by vaccines that cost maybe a day's salary for a parent (and cost the manufacturer probably pennies to make). Same with antibiotics.
The money all gets spent on the other end of life. We now have the technology to keep patients who would've died within the hour alive for months in an ICU. That costs millions, and doesn't work all the time. But when it does - how can you put a price on that? What price is there on a father being able to see his kids grow up, or a grandparent being able to meet their grandchildren?
The same goes for many other areas. We can build 1200-square-feet houses pretty cheaply. But why bother, when there's some family that's willing to pay over $1M for that 5000-square-feet McMansion?
I think a lot of the problem is that American culture is so damned competitive. It's not enough to have enough - you also have to have more than the neighbors. There's really no end to this game - it will always be possible to have something slightly better, it's just that it becomes increasingly expensive the more you try to squeeze out.
Health care's perhaps the biggest example. A hundred years ago, millions of children died in infancy from things like measles, whooping cough, polio, etc. Now this has been wiped out by vaccines that cost maybe a day's salary for a parent (and cost the manufacturer probably pennies to make). Same with antibiotics.
The money all gets spent on the other end of life. We now have the technology to keep patients who would've died within the hour alive for months in an ICU. That costs millions, and doesn't work all the time. But when it does - how can you put a price on that? What price is there on a father being able to see his kids grow up, or a grandparent being able to meet their grandchildren?
The same goes for many other areas. We can build 1200-square-feet houses pretty cheaply. But why bother, when there's some family that's willing to pay over $1M for that 5000-square-feet McMansion?
I think a lot of the problem is that American culture is so damned competitive. It's not enough to have enough - you also have to have more than the neighbors. There's really no end to this game - it will always be possible to have something slightly better, it's just that it becomes increasingly expensive the more you try to squeeze out.