Reddit mentions of The Cost Disease: Why Computers Get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn't

Read up on Baumol's Cost Disease

The prediction of "rising" education and "rising" medical costs was made in the 1960's by Baumol. The work he did was to factor Productivity and Technology into predictions of prices. His conclusion in his latest book (updating his 1960's work) is that we can easily afford medicine and education, because in reality the prices of both are in fact falling.

But they just are not falling as fast as goods and services (on which we base CPI), and those costs are not falling as fast as computers and technology.

Because the lion's share of economists don't factor in productivity and technology when studying pricing, (or even wages and investment), they become confused and do not understand why education and medical costs are "rising".

Now Baumol himself is a bit ... "traditional". So he doesn't make much of the connection between the cost disease and the Income Gap. But the fact is that nearly all the rewards of technology and productivity have gone to a sliver of a percentage of the most wealthy in this country. The money exists to pay for education and medical care. It is just in the hands of a very, very, very few.