This is such a weird excuse for bad policy. Making more money[0][1] somehow means its okay to saddle students with an average debt of $30-40 thousand dollars. A downpayment on a first home would be a much better use of that money, for example.

Really, the average US citizen is nickel and dimed to death with this sort of thing, from health insurance, to dental, to lots of other required but not accounted for as required costs (like cars and associated car insurance).

Not to mention, we have little safety net in the US, you're really going to hurt if you have a bad run of luck after job loss. No qualms in allowing people to become homeless as a matter of policy.

If someone were to ask me, I would say that we in the US have it completely backwards in respect to how the average citizenry is expected to live. Its not thriving, its constantly having some kind of lingering potential disaster to plan for.

[0]: which I sincerely wonder about the true veracity of this statistic

[1]: Don't forget too, that more and more struggle to pay their student loans each year and the trend has generally been that its getting worse, not better.