Kurtz makes an important point: The "affordability crisis" is more about social capital than financial capital. The price point to "buy into" a decent life has gone up because so much of society is dysfunctional. You have to have enough money to live in a place that isn't overrun with crime or other anti-social behavior. That was not the case a couple generations ago the way it is now. This means the answer is not just a change in economic policy. Yes, we do need better policies (eg, lower regulation that can allow more entry level housing to be built - the affordability crisis on housing is largely due to artificial constraints on supply and artificial inflation of demand; deporting illegals would help with the supply/demand problem, but so would an ease in the regulatory burden; etc.). Beyond policy changes, we need to mend the torn social fabric. And underneath that torn social fabric is our torn spiritual fabric. The younger generation's misery has many causes, some self-inflicted, but the reality is that the social inheritance they should have received has largely been squandered. The financial squeeze is largely due to the social and spiritual liquidation of American culture. This is the key claim: "My argument is that previous generations received an enormous stock of social capital: trusted neighbors, functional public schools, a productive courtship culture, predictable career arcs, and a public square in which children could roam and adults could be relied upon. That stock, once given for free, has now been substantially liquidated. Instead, the young must now buy back, item by item and at retail prices, what their grandparents received as a bounty of prior civilizational investments." This is why there is no political or economic solution to our mess. Yes, we do need political and economic reforms. But rebuilding social capital depends on the character of the people, the kinds of lives they live, and the kinds of communities they form. A high trust, morally coherent society (like America once had) cannot be legislated or monetized into existence. The problems run much deeper than policy.