There's certainly a correlation between necessities and government regulation, but I think that's an oversimplification. A more nuanced way to look at it is to

There's certainly a correlation between necessities and government regulation, but I think that's an oversimplification. A more nuanced way to look at it is to consider the context in which a consumer needs to decide what to spend their money on... * Necessities have a much different demand than luxuries. The free market may play against consumers when not getting healthcare or food is not an option. * Markets like healthcare and education make the cost benefit analysis for the consumer so hard as to be effectively not done by most of the population. people find out the cost after they already owe the money a lot of the time. gov programs can exacerbate this but so can free market loans and insurance. * As the article points out it's also got a lot to do with the production of goods. Mfg costs have come way down, innovations for lowering healthcare costs are much more complicated. * Also consumers may have less money in their pockets to begin with because of some of the same reasons luxuries are cheap. Cheap mfg = cheap or no mfg paycheck in the us.