I would counter the house/education one by suggesting that it's cherry picking the points that support the underlying claim. It seems like other tech related it

I would counter the house/education one by suggesting that it's cherry picking the points that support the underlying claim. It seems like other tech related items that people engage with everyday without even thinking about it are orders of magnitude less expensive. Ex: communication, information access (especially global). But even this is missing the underlying contextual claim, and your arguments kind of highlight exactly that. Americans primarily are looking at there immediate history (one generation back) or at what others have around them. They don't typically compare against other cultures or 100+ years ago. Real wages absolutely plummeted over time for Americans but taken in the context of non-americans is another point that was trying to be brought up.