You know how college costs a ton of money, and you need a bachelor’s and 3 years of experience to work some piece of shit job, and how a lot of young people seem to be delaying major “adult” purchases because they’re strapped for cash? It’s because the economy is doing well. Sic. That is not a typo. Not saying it’s perfect, but it is fairly healthy. Labor costs in the US, compared to the world in general, let alone compared to historical costs, are insanely high. We don’t have bullshit jobs in high supply anymore; we’re too competitive. You want to get even a crappy job in the US, you need to have more education than the monarchs of every nation on Earth had prior to the 20th century. You go back in time even a century and tell people that the kid sacking goods in a market for peanuts would be able to pass a test on multivariable algebra and they would have hanged you for lunacy. Our labor market is insanely competitive, and the standards for distinguishing oneself are moving ever higher. A college degree is now the baseline. It’s not enough to work like an ox, you need higher education–even if it is merely a voucher attesting that you can navigate an intransigent bureaucracy without committing assault, as human nature dictates you ought. Functional literacy in the latest technology is implicitly demanded. America is not going back to the world of punchclocks in a factory. We’ve transcended that. Getting work is a bitch and a half because we are on the top. The high standards are written into the system now. C’est la vie.