First the income levels he is talking about in the middle class can easily pay for the life style you are talking about both in my area, and the region the Prof

First the income levels he is talking about in the middle class can easily pay for the life style you are talking about both in my area, and the region the Professor is from (PA) so I am not sure what you believe the middle class is Second it does not matter where you place the income bands, the fact of the matter is people are making more money today then they did in the 1970's out pacing inflation which factors in things like housing prices. People today can afford MORE than people in 1970's did In some ways the cost of netflix is what people are complaining about, it is sad you discounted everything said simply because you misunderstood the point he was making. As to education people should be upset not with the cost of education but with the evaporation of good paying jobs that do not need an education. No society can last if the education system can not produce employable workers in 12 years of schooling. The fact that employers are requiring an additional 4 years for the vast majority of good paying jobs shows a clear problem with our government run educational system, so simply adding on 4 more years to the government paid system is likely not going to resolve that problem. However the only thing people are demanded today is free college not fixing the K-12 system so employers will recognize a high school diploma as enough education for the majority of their positions To close I bet you can find a region, like silicon valley, where this data does not apply, but for the US on the whole people are better off, and if Silicon valley is where people are worse off then maybe it time to move away from the poop ridden streets and come to middle America where things are much better...