Some real estate is a positional good, which has the price set by how much money the richest people have.<p>There is no way around this. If everyone wants to live as close to (say) Times Square as possible, that land will be expensive.<p>But you don&#x27;t have to enter that zero-sum rat race. There are lots of places to live that aren&#x27;t the only places the very rich want to live. They still enjoy decent schools and low crime.<p>Some college education is positional, too. If you want &quot;Ivy League Education&quot; for your kid, well, there are just about as many slots as there were 30 years, but a lot more rich people, so the price will get bid up to infinity. Here the real shame is that the non-gold-star educational system is still getting more and more expensive, for many many reasons.