From bottom up: - Made in china, more compact designs since 2005 - Made in china, more compact designs since 2005 - Made in china, more compact designs since 2005 - Made in china - Sunk costs in infrastructure - Made in east asian country / south american country of choice - < 5% change - < 5% change - < 5% change - Service - Service - Service - Service The interesting ones are mainly price of health care, college tuition, and child care. The first two are tied to the problem of the tag price increasing to help subsidize those who cannot afford it (An over-simplification, but still an element of it). The last I know nothing about. Note that the top two items were once not seen as essentials.
The distinction here appears to be 'service' vs. 'thing'.
A simplistic attempt to explain that would be: Services need to employ local people (who cost more), while things can be made in countries where people earn relatively little. But I don't know how much of the discrepancy that actually explains. Healthcare and education are notoriously expensive in the US compared to other developed countries.
I think there's more to it than the 2 points the author addresses. For many tech "toys" the profits have shifted from initial sale to steady income across the life of the item. Amazon doesn't need to sell Kindles for much (if any) over their cost because Kindle owners can be expected to buy media from Amazon. Same goes for Apple products. Same goes for cell phones. I don't see any sort of entertainment or other media represented on this graph, how have those price points changed?