Are average Americans losing purchasing power? This is a real question, I don't know where to look that up.
On a positive note, it is encouraging to see a much broader of diversity of opinion on certain topics lately, where one year ago many of the comments in this thread would have been heavily downvoted. I believe there is a genuine change of sentiment underway even among the well paid tech classes.
If you’re smart you can self-educate yourself in many areas to a better level than 80% of the ivy-league alumni. What you don’t get is: - certificates with prestige - network - extrinsic motivation
With the internet what it is, there ought to be a way to make this evaluation process less labor intensive.
Anti social folks who don’t go to college will very likely still be anti-social if they do.
The main benefit of a standardized certificate is that it helps people evaluating your skills do so more easily. There’s no question that a smart hard-working self-taught super-social person will have a harder time than a less skilled person who has a respected institutions stamp of approval.
Rent can be fixed by moving. A lot of people move out of California and NY for a better life. Companies will follow.
College and education are being disrupted. Hopefully online courses and independent certification can fix the problem soon.
Healthcare is expensive because people in US are obese and unhealthy. And there is a lot more treatment for previously untreated problems but at a very high price. Go walk around a hospital to see where your insurance money is spent.
An excerpt from the article:
"Dr. Baumol’s insight in the 1960s was that costs inevitably rise fastest for things that are difficult to automate, including medical care, garbage collection and the live performance of a Mozart string quartet.
It came to him in the middle of the night.
“It was 4 in the morning,” he recalled in an oral history. “I suddenly woke up and said I know why those costs are going up! I got up, wrote down a few notes, and went to sleep again.” His theory became known as Baumol’s Cost Disease."