While there's definitely been a drop in the purchasing power of lower and middle classes (though [1]), monetary inflation alone does not seem to explain this tr

While there's definitely been a drop in the purchasing power of lower and middle classes (though [1]), monetary inflation alone does not seem to explain this trend in a satisfactory manner. In all honesty, most software developers I know could probably sustain a really decent living working 50% of the time they are doing now, if they really wanted to. But for whatever reason, we _don't_ want to. It's almost like our expectations are what have inflated. [1] Some things have gotten ridiculously expensive, like housing. However, other things have not, we're just buying much, much more of them. It's hard not to draw comparisons between our own children's environment and our own upbringing, as cliche as that might be, but they have a lot more "stuff" than we did, be it phones, tablets, sports classes and coaches, you name it.