I'm glad that I'm not the only one seeing this effect. And economic colonialism is a succinct way of putting it as you said.

I mostly blame the government for it. If we had a better economy we could compete and the prices for us locals wouldn't be prohibitively expensive. But no, our government (and most of opposition) is a corrupt criminal organization so there is no way out of it. We're just getting poorer and poorer relatively speaking unfortunately.