I think part of the problem with those 47% is that they can't distinguish the two cases. Middle class people aspire for their children to be upper middle class, and the traditional routes to such jobs (excluding the software world), require an expensive education. They do not require an expensive house, or expensive car, or expensive wedding.

The article strikes a chord with me, because the author exhibits some of the same thinking as my own parents. They paid for my brother and I to go to college, for which we are very grateful. But they also say that the giant house in an expensive zip code, the foreign cars, etc, are "for us" using some nebulous baby boomer thinking like "if you want to be somebody, you have to look like somebody."

Far be it for me to judge my parents' choices. But recently, my dad quit his job and started a business. At that time, he definitely wished he had built up more of a runway.