Once upon a time, a man with a HS education could buy a house and support a wife and 3 kids. That’s pretty much the world I grew up in.
Then a college degree became pretty necessary to achieve the American Dream.
Then women entered the workforce. Soon, a family actually needed that second income if it hoped to own a house and have 2 kids.
Then a lot of people decided that the double income was enough to buy a house and some fun toys, and stay up to date on those college loans — but they’d have to skip the idea of having kids.
Recently, young people realized that in some areas, a “starter home” can cost well over $500,000. So, no home for them, they’d just rent an apartment.
But now apartments are unaffordable. So young people live alone, in Mom’s basement. No apartment, no house, no friends, no love life. They may have a job — but what’s the point??
This is a society in decline, and a lot of people don’t see it. A lot of people think that today things are exactly like they were in 1979. “I did it!!!! Kids today are just lazy and stupid! There’s no other reason for their failure!”
But I feel bad for young people. I think society as a whole has failed them.
How long has the term ‘cougar’ been around?
You have it exactly right.
When women came into the work force in large numbers, circa 1977, everything changed: the DINKS could bid up a big house, one that was nicer then a single income would buy.
This causes a float effect on all other similar homes. The comps say they are all worth that, the owners hold out for it, and everyone else had to adopt the two earner strategy to compete. Since most homes were owned outright back then, the sellers could typically hold out. Eventually the whole market is driven up by this inflation. And the process repeats, with the social effects you note.
But there’s one other driver: mass immigration, both legal and illegal. There are over 100 million more people in the US now, virtually all from immigration - the Boomers didn’t even replace themselves. So there’s that much more competition, but this time it’s worse: the competition are people who are part of Protected Classes: South Asians - Indians - are in fact STILL classified that way, and there are a myriad of government sponsored subsidies designed to give them an advantage in home and business finance (look at the SBA programs for them).
A reasonable person would conclude that the people who call themselves the Government basically declared war on their own populace back then. And of course, that’s what they did.
Kids now are going through schools that are much tougher then 1967. What was once Sophomore biology in college is taught to HS freshmen. Taking AP Calculus as a HS junior is ho hum: you won’t get into a UC Engineering school with that - even with an A and a 5 on the AP test - and maybe not even some of the better state schools. ESPECIALLY if you’re guilty of being White. So it ain’t surprising that a lot of them look up the hill and decide...why bother. Too high.
Without the police state we live in this place shoulda blown a long time ago. Right now, that’s all they got: it’s all held together by a ruthless police state. Which of course will eventually fall, and maybe take down the planet with it.
VERY few people are born naturally wanting to work hard and strive for a better life. It's almost always something that has to be taught and instilled from a fairly young age.
What you describe is a big part of the problem. No question. But it was a pincer attack on prosperity. The other pincer: offshoring and deinstrustrialization, which got going bigly in the 80’s and 90’s.