First, can we dismiss all of this as an illusion? Maybe adjusting for inflation is harder than I think. Inflation is an average, so some things have to have higher-than-average inflation; maybe it’s education, health care, etc.
I'm saying that in fact, this explanation must be true.
SA further says:
I’m more worried about the part where the cost of basic human needs goes up faster than wages do. Even if you’re making twice as much money, if your health care and education and so on cost ten times as much, you’re going to start falling behind.
The reason is that if this broader worry were true, then consumption should be going down. In fact, consumption has only gone up. Again: find me a good or service that the median or even the poor consume less of than in 1975.
If SA were making a very isolated claim that education and transit cost too much, I'd be agreeing with him. But he's actually making a much broader claim, and the broader claim is what I dispute.