Miguel Afonso CaetanoI'm not sure but I think this is more wishful thinking than anything else...
"Rather than the increasing burden of essential costs suggesting living standards are being eroded, if we take a step back, it’s an indication that people across society are becoming more prosperous.
Why have services like education and healthcare become so expensive across the rich world? Because the people performing these services reside in affluent societies and dynamic economies where they can rightly command a high wage.
More precisely, per William Baumol’s 1967 famous observation, as countries develop economically, the same productivity growth that drives down the cost of tradeable goods causes the cost of in-person services to balloon. Wages in sectors like healthcare and education that require intensive face-to-face labour, and have slow (if any) productivity growth, are forced upwards in order to attract workers who would otherwise opt for high-paying work in more productive sectors. The result is that even if people keep consuming the exact same basket of goods and services, as living standards in their country increase they will find more and more of their spending is going on essential services."
https://www.ft.com/content/3fa9b486-1cc2-4bc7-9557-552266570362
EURACTIV Energy & Environment
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