It gets to this question: how do you valuate a refrigerator in an absolute sense? We have a VERY robust way to valuate refrigerators in a relative sense (the price system / market transactions). But in absolute terms, where do we even start? There was once a time when only the extreme rich lived a refrigerator quality life, yet today the poorest people in the West take the refrigerator quality life for granted.

That people still look at the contemporary poor -- that are incredibly rich in absolute terms -- as poor, exemplifies the other problem I mentioned, that perceptions don't change linearly as "stuff" changes.