What Are Our Priorities?

Between 1993 and 2020, the price of education skyrocketed, while the costs of food, housing, and medical care also rose substantially. What didn’t go up? Real incomes. Of course, a $500 television you buy today is incomparably better than a television you could buy at any price in 1995, and the least expensive modern smartphone had no comparable product in 1995.

It’s not a bad thing that clothes are cheaper and televisions are better. But those advances obscure that it’s gotten a lot harder for average families to make ends meet, and a lot harder to get their children the education they need to climb up the income ladder.

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Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers by Category vs. Real Median Income

Indexed to 1993

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.