It's not you. It's rich people.

Still, the case for groupthink and conflating personal experience into macro-trends—two no-nos for economists—is convincing. And there's another factor at work here. In New York in particular, price increases in trademark goods are well-documented in the media: subway fares, Broadway tickets, even fish. And rising home prices, of course, have been the singular New York obsession for several years.

So, let's not envy the rich. They deserve our pity. Sure, their dollars may be more lightly taxed than they were a few years ago. But they don't go nearly as far as they used to.