Are you worse off than Mom and Dad?
This article upsets me. Salaries do not increase enough to keep up with costs of housing and education, which increase leaps and bounds over inflation. Even if you compare today’s two-income houseold with a one-income household from thirty years ago, today’s family can afford less.
It upsets me mostly when I think one generation into the future. How will my (future) kids’ kids afford any sort of education? The only people who will be able to be afford college will be the super-rich.
Published or updated September 11, 2003. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke, also known as Flexo, has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. 
{ 2 comments }
Just think of what our friend’s mother said recently….back when she got married, the average salary was 50% of the cost of the average house. Do you know anyone now who makes 50% of the cost of a house per year? I certainly don’t…
I’m working very hard to make sure I save up for my children’s education now.
If I’m lucky I’ll leave enough of an estate to endow a trust for my grandchildren’s education or if I’ve been lucky enough to pay for theirs, to endow a trust for my great grandchildren’s education.
Something is seriously wrong with our higher education system.
I’m curious. What percentage of the population went to college 20, 30 and 50 years ago? Wasn’t it a much smaller percentage. Are we now assuming that a privelege is now an entitlement? Are we confusing the economic affordability of local and community colleges with private institutions?
Maybe college was NEVER affordable for the vast majority of people. Maybe many more people today attend college, whereas in the past they attended vocational schools. Look at the % of students in europe who attend vocational schools over college. Very different experience there.
Perhaps the reality that college was always expensive and difficult to obtain is a scary one.
On the other hand the ridiculous and highly artificial inflation of academic fees is also very scary. So is the perposterous social engineering going on in admissions departments. Sometimes I think the colleges raise their tuitions to become more unaffordable and then selectively dole out scholarships to further their own utopian social programs.
good luck and have a wonderful day,
makingourway