>>The days when someone could finance a house and put kids thru college on a truck driver's salary - as one could during the 60's - were fun while they lasted, but they're over.
OK, but why did that happen and who did it benefit. And what does the truck driver's daughter think of the American Dream now?
Rhetorical- but seems to me there's no reason why somebody who works hard and saves for it, shouldn't be able to fund a better life for his/her kids. Take away that expectation and the social compact starts to look bad and Robin Hood starts to look good.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1