Depressing it certainly is. We are officially number four in the world, but the delta is pretty close between the top ten.
Life has a habit of driving the value of everything back to the mean. So do economies-especially now in the era of free trade and free information. Eventually there will be a levelling of prices. Guess who is going to lose in that little (OK...huge) adjustment.
In the meantime we live in just about the highest cost country in the universe* A lot of that is the overhead of a free medicine, free education, no guns, safety net up the wazoo country, but not all of it. Subtract F-35s, pink batts, NBN etc and the picture would be a bit better. But we do live in a Scandinavian country, only with sun. There is apparently a premium to live here. Too bad that my kids won't be able to, but that's their fault for not paying attention in Calculus.
*universe. I am practicing to become a QF spin meister. Since Earth=Universe, as far as we and the estate agents know, using the grand scale is a free kick towards more impressive rhetoric.