I think we agree on several points.

It is fair to say that some of this spending is values spending but I still don't believe that tells the whole picture. One book on the subject of how parents are trying to keep up with the top 20%--not so their kids will fit in but so that they can know the right people to help get into college, help get internships, help getjobs, was Richard Reeves's "Dream Hoarders." Not a perfect book but it reflects my lived experience of wealthy suburban parents putting their children in lessons, tutoring, and sports at ever younger ages to make sure they can compete and remain in the top 20%.

Do your kids want to be homeowners? Or are they completely happy with the lifestyle they have? I guess if they're completely happy, then this is not really an issue for them, is it?

Numbers here, numbers there, all I know is at the end of the day I am a person driving a 20-year-old car by choice, I do not shop, and we have not been on a plane for a trip in more than a decade. I live what you say your values are. But I can still appreciate that everything is much, much more expensive than it was even a decade ago. Particularly health care costs, but everything else as well. Perhaps somewhere in the middle of our beliefs--yours that people should still be able to save themselves into the middle class, and mine that the middle class is being priced out of existence--lies reality, or the truth, or whatever you want to call it.

Thanks for the comment!