The three main things which have skyrocketed in price since the 70s are higher education, healthcare, and housing. On top of that, over-credentialized jobs now require bachelor’s degrees for things which used to require high school diplomas. This fact alone has meant that young people today start their careers significantly poorer than their parents did.
Point is, it’s not just about the prices of sneakers and pasta. For all of the most important costs in life, things have gotten much more expensive.
High schools do not maintain any sort of reasonable standards for granting a degree anymore, so it's no wonder businesses require a college degree. We decided everyone needed a HS degree, so we started lowering the standards for it, "teaching to the test", and only focusing on improving the worst quartile students to minimum tested standards. Now the same thing is happening with colleges.
The solution is to fix secondary education, but there's no political will to do that.
My barber, who neither went to college nor inherited anything, lives on a 10-acre property with his wife (who works as a teacher) and two children. His secret? The home is a mobile home (they're saving up to build a real house), and he's in a low COL area with reasonable home prices, with the only real disadvantage being that the rest of the country thinks it's in a "shithole state".
Your statement, properly amended, is as follows: it's impossible to own a home in a highly desirable, relatively low-density area, with many high income earners and lots of inbound migration both internal and external, unless you inherit one. Which of course makes perfect sense, and there's nothing wrong with that picture.
It's actually pretty funny. My old neighborhood was one of those with places with Black Lives Matter signs on every other lawn but approximately zero actual black people living there. Here, there are approximately zero Black Lives Matter signs, but a lot more actual diversity on the ground, with people of different races rubbing shoulders as neighbors, friends, and lovers. There's openly gay people. Everyone minds their own business, for the most part.
Of course, every place has its ups and downs, and there are legitimate downsides to living in a place like this. The restaurant scene is definitely not as good, although I'm sure some of that is due to just the size difference of the cities. But that brings me back to my original point, which is that you can't have your cake (big-city amenities, nice climate, majority politics you agree with) and eat it (houses you can afford right out of the gate as a new participant in the economy), too.
It would be worth their while for "kids these days" to examine whether they'd rather be tutted at and get a cold shoulder every now and then[0] for being a lesbian with purple hair or whatever while having the opportunity to buy a home and make an independent life for themselves, versus having their identity "affirmed" in a place where an actual ownership stake in that society is forever out of reach. I'm not saying there's a right answer here; all I'm saying that it's worth everyone asking that question of themselves.
[0]: And in my experience, it's at most every now and then. The difference in the sociopolitical attitudes between, say, Oregon and Mississippi, is basically just 48% one way and 52% the other, just flipped around. The number of people with similarities are much, much greater than the differences.
That's not going to work in several areas of the world. Which is why we normally make houses.
> the rest of the country thinks it's in a "shithole state".
You mean if he's gay or an atheist he will get shot? Perfectly reasonable to ask people to go live there, of course.
> Which of course makes perfect sense, and there's nothing wrong with that picture.
"I got mine, I don't care if you don't get yours".
You should give speeches, we could bring school children to learn what's wrong with humanity.
> That's not going to work in several areas of the world.
Trust me, this part of the world gets plenty hot in the summer, yet people make do in mobile homes. At least people here are given the choice to suffer through a hot summer in a home they own.
You can set building codes to be arbitrarily high such that nobody will ever suffer the indignity of straying from a 72 degree, 45% relative humidity indoor environment. The only downside to that, of course, is that nobody will able to afford a house.
> You mean if he's gay or an atheist he will get shot?
This is about as accurate as Fox News saying that if you go to San Francisco, roving bands of homeless people will break into your car and take a dump in it, and you'll step on a pile of fentanyl and instantly get addicted.
Unless they don't, of course. Especially considering every year will be hotter than the previous.
>it's impossible to own a home in a highly desirable, relatively low-density area, with many high income earners and lots of inbound migration both internal and external, unless you inherit one
Of course it would be nice if everyone got what they wanted, but when it comes to housing it seems to me that everybody wants to live in the same places. This drives up the prices in those areas because only a limited amount of people can live in a given area.
I don't see how you can fix that with any policy. As long as everyone wants to live in the same place the cost of living is going to be expensive there.
This is a moving target that can never be met. We can already provide all of that for very cheap if people are willing to accept standards from some decades ago. But they aren't. They want the expensive stuff.
When I was growing up the main part of the meal was potatoes/rice/pasta. Meat was a few times a week (too rarely) and there were no fancy sauces/condiments on it. Why? Because it was cheap.