system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why have wages been stagnant since the 60s, yet housing costs have doubled and college costs have trippled?
gpt
Supply and demand. The population has increased, and unskilled and skilled labor that doesn't require college education has been placed over seas where wages and cost of living are lower. Therefore you have more unemployed people desperate for work, more people pursuing housing, and more people entering universities.

However, while demand is significantly higher, the number of universities and their capacity hasn't increased at a similar rate. Furthermore, American culture has shifted from tax payer subsidized state universities to direct tuition payments, increasing perceived cost to the student (and their parents). Additionally, due to decreased tax payer funding, many of these same state universities now focus on tuition payments from out of state (and country) students that they can charge at higher rates. This decreases the available seats for domestic students, again lowering supply and increasing prices.

As for housing, these costs have increased predominantly in urban areas where population density has continued to climb. In places like D.C., Seattle, NYC and San Francisco, there has been a huge migration of people back into these urban areas away from suburbs. Due to the lack of land to develop more housing, the housing costs there have increased at an astronomical rate. Additionally, since the 1980s, there have been huge influxes of foreign investment in American housing as a vehicle to safely store foreign wealth in a form easily converted to dollars. As with universities, the mix of increasing population both domestically and by addition of foreigners, combined with a limited resource (land) that cannot develop as fast as the population grows increases costs.