Comment by AnthonyMouse

> How is this related to Baumol?

Because people claim that higher costs are a result of Baumol and are hypothetically something good or normal when it's actually regulatory costs and government capture stealing from working people. "Don't worry, prices are only up because we got so much more productive, not because of artificial scarcity or because it now requires 10 people to do certain things that used to take one."

> Baumol is also rooted in the concept of price elasticity, which in your contrived example seems not to exist.

Because the example is housing, which is a necessity and therefore has fairly inelastic demand. If the price goes up, you pay it, because otherwise you're homeless. And then people buy flowers less because they can't afford it, so people lose their jobs at the flower shop, but new jobs open up in construction because it became more labor-intensive and has fairly inelastic demand.

> It specifically describes when prices go up in some sectors because of an increase in productivity in another sector.

Here's the less contrived example: Productivity improves in things like electronics or manufacturing, giving people more disposable income. But there is certain amount of disposable income people have to be left with before they'll revolt, and the increase in efficiency leaves them with more than that. Which allows the government to increase regulatory overhead or real dollars per capita collected in taxes or pass rules that artificially increase scarcity at the behest of campaign donors, without making people feel like they've lost ground.

But the efficiency improvements should have allowed them to gain ground, which is what has been taken from them.