Remix.run Logo
steveBK123 a day ago

My mental model for high/low inflation goods/services are really just what % of their cost is driven by local on-shore labor which isn't / can't be automated to be more efficient. The "can't" is sometimes regulatory or cultural.

So for example childcare & education both fall into high inflation because we almost demand that it be inefficient. Customers demand to know the worker:customer ratios, and expect them to be low. It's held up by universities as a measure of quality!

Similarly with medical care, you don't see a lot of efficiency-increasing changes over time. The process of going to the doctor when you are sick, getting a prescription, and picking it up at the pharmacy is about 90% the same as it was in the 1980s. Maybe Amazon's efforts with telehealth&pharmacy can help here, tbd.

Housing is partially land use / zoning, increased regulatory burdens with time on multi-family housing, and that home construction itself is still something of an artisan craft than an industrial automated process.