Same story with taxes. My property taxes have gone from 2 weeks of income to 3 months of income.
When I was a kid sales tax was 3% of all sales. Today it is almost 10% on all sales... that means the REAL cost of local government has gone up 3 times the rate of inflation.
We had better services 50 years ago. Better schools, more adequate roads, better libraries, better programs, more reliable public services... all better and it cost 1/3 as much.
I wish it would all just melt down and fail to start over. It is impossible to fix.