Prices are dropping. Or more accurately tending to zero. Automation, standardisation, artificial materials are all driving this trend to zero in certain categories. Even as cost of certain goods drops in absolute terms, rising incomes also reduce the percentage of income devoted to certain necessities. As a kid I remember clothes-shopping being a much-anticipated treat, limited to birthdays and Christmas. Shoes, stationery, electronics — you name it, it was expensive. Poor people didn’t have furniture, or at best a string cots. Most white-collar executives could afford to buy one house at the end of their…