Hopefully, American making $150k/year heard about savings, and can also predict the expense of college, and can plan for it in advance.
First, the $150k is at the time of child’s application, not over their entire life.
Second, college tuition has been increasing at highly variable rates so I doubt anyone would have guessed that tuition would increase 8%/year for 18 years.
Third, four years of Dartmouth tuition is $300k. Let’s graciously say the average income over the kid’s 18 years is $100k. That means that that parents would need to save $16k/year or 16%. There’s no tax deferred program that allows $16k/year so factor in tax dollars.
Fourth, families frequently have multiple children. So if they have two, you think parents should save 30% of their income for college? Or if 3, 45%?
It’s funny how people imagine $150k is some massive amount of money. And it’s a decent living, but it’s not something that paying an extra $6k per month is possible.
Your second point doesn't make any sense - we should be punishing children because of the amorphous negative externalities of every professional in the United States economy? They're to blame as opposed to the leadership of modern corporations that vote themselves multi million dollar bonuses each year while offshoring business and keeping worker pay down?