[magduf]

>It’s hard to level existing residences in many historic cities and so housing costs rise, yet people are still wanting the opportunities afforded by those cities enough to sacrifice having better housing conditions elsewhere.

We don't have historic cities in America. At best, we have a few small historic districts, but everything else in the metro area is certainly not historic. But they don't build enough housing anyway, because too many Americans want McMansions instead of condos which are far more space-efficient.

The Bay area is particularly awful since existing homeowners have too much power (and local government has way too much power; local government should have NO power to restrict development, that should be the state's decision) and won't allow higher-density housing to be built as it affects their property values. This is a uniquely American problem.

>The problem is “eventually” has an unclear definition in both cases, and few are willing to sacrifice their potential of attaining certain careers or income in exchange for working low wage jobs waiting for a hypothetical future correction of this inequality.

My proposal is to just let the economy crash and take a couple of generations to recover, so just worry about your kids or grandkids having a better future. It's basically what's going to happen anyway, so you might as well not burden yourself with student debt. The situation we have now is totally unsustainable.