What economists call inflation, wage and price inflation, was something like 13-17% total over 10 years. Where everything else more than doubled.
We get gaslighted to only think about the wage and price inflation year over year rate. But not the the total relative change in prices over time. The latter is the important part.
As someone on here said years ago, "I love my iphone but I worry about health insurance."
What good is cheap frivolities if the necessary building blocks of life are skyrocketing.
Also official reasoning about housing costs ignores that there are huge variations in that prices people have to pay to house themselves. The focus on average market rates hides the reality on the ground.
That's a concern primarily to wealthier people who already have assets, and for them, the increases are double-edged swords. Them that has, gets. Them that doesn't -- i.e. young but upwardly mobile people -- are forced to play that high-risk game.
The genuinely poor weren't playing that game to begin with, and could never retire, so they were always out of luck. The only thing they have going for them is social security, i.e. wealth transfer. It's not much, but the alternative would be absolute poverty, which is what it looked like in the early 20th century.
I'm more concerned about them then about whether the wealthy stay wealthy, or even whether the young and upwardly-mobile can get assets.