After thinking about it and perusing the magazines, I've modified my thinking. It's not so much that things are getting more expensive, but that there are more and more high end products and less and less low end products.
And I include scratchbuilding supplies as "low end" because they can save quite a bit of money.
This trend would seem to me to be a death knell for the hobby, as it'll be harder and harder to get young people with lower budgets into the hobby.
Oh, we'll survive, but it'll become more and more a hobby of well off old farts. Sort of like NMRA's domination by "life" members :-).