[micky_25]

>... so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions.

What about western countries where people under 35 are dealing with high student debt, unaffordable housing, stagnate wages and "gig" economy jobs? Things look pretty glum unless you've got some form of inheritance on the horizon.

[jblow]

The high student debt and unaffordable housing are almost entirely due to policies of the Democratic Party, a.k.a. the party that is supposedly trying to reduce income inequality.

Interventions often don’t do what you wanted them to do.

[maoistinquisitr]

I'm not a fan of Obama but one good thing he was doing towards the end was cracking down on fraudulent "higher education" programs milking students and the taxpayer. He was deliberately choking off the loan subsidy fraud game. Unfortunately, Trump immediately resumed the Bush policy of pumping up the student debt for worthless degrees bubble.

[jblow]

But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that the legitimate schools have been able to raise their prices tremendously because the students have all this easy money given to them for just that purpose.

[cma]

Tongue in cheek it can't help that people take advantage of states by getting cheap state subsidized tuition and then flee to low tax states when it pays off.

[maoistinquisitr]

Well, I agree, but that's definitely a totally bipartisan scam. It's not just the loan subisidies, though. A huge amount of federal policy building over 70 years shovels tax money towards "higher ed". Most major schools are de facto defense contractors.