What you're saying surely has elements of truth, in average the struggle is real and it's hard. But it's also a matter of perspective. Here's a few additional

What you're saying surely has elements of truth, in average the struggle is real and it's hard. But it's also a matter of perspective. Here's a few additional perspectives, none of them the whole answer. But possibly provide insights and even hope for those who are most motivated. Creating a house is a huge achievement, if you had to build it, and it's components, yourself, you would spend decades building a modern style house. It's unrealistic to expect that everyone can get this easily and early in life. Our mortgage system allows people to own earlier while paying it off to make that possible, but otherwise this is something that only a skilled person after decades of work would achieve. Minimum wage isn't expected to be the maximum income achievement for someone who works hard, the idea is to find a niche where you can make more than minimum wage. This takes time of hard work, but it's patently still very possible in Australia, and much harder in many other countries overseas. People who bought houses in the past had it easier in some ways, but lived a much much more basic standard of life. If you talk to average (ie not wealthy) people who bought houses from 50 to 20 years ago, it was incredibly hard for them, and involved sacrifice of pretty much everything to the mortgage for a decade of their life, while working hard and supporting a family. No overseas holidays, computers phones and entertainment, paying for kids sports programs, home delivery of meals etc etc. The standard of entitlement has raised incredibly decade on decade - in the past it was Expected to sacrifice to afford a home. Some people still, despite the challenges were buying homes on minimum wage jobs in the last decade, before the current waves of price rises, and some probably are still buying now. But those people who did structured their life in a way to reduce every expense and save then buy modest places, away from conveniences and lifestyle areas. Similar sorts of sacrifices that people of the past would have done, just they are living in an era of inflated lifestyle expectations so they socially making more sacrifices even if the actual physical sacrifices are less in that they e.g. still have a phone and more entertainment than the past.