> Currently we have people spending a lot of time figuring out how to pay for medical care and higher education because that's where the inflation has hit the hardest.

That's also because of the American Government's idiotic policies on those two "items", in my opinion.

> In a free market prices generally fall.

[citation needed]

If you have X amount of money and Y goods/service, the ratio of money per unit of good/service is X/Y. Economic growth increases the amount of goods/services provided; tractors dig more holes than shovels, and so on. This means Y increases, and thus X/Y must decrease: the cost per unit of good/service decreases.

>In a free market prices generally fall.

If we take the far-right Austrian definition of "free market" (meaning: a market in which the only functions of government are property and contract enforcement) then we have zero empirical evidence for much anything about free markets.

They've never existed.

Further, we don't even have solid evidence that hypothetical markets of that kind would be Pareto-optimal. They serve literally no function except that of ideology.

19th century America is close enough and the results astounded the entire world.

19th century America was a rabid, rampant employer of slavery, indentured servitude, and debt peonage. And when it comes to it, 20th century America was far more impressive.