Frankly, I think the country is in a slow-motion death spiral. Nobody can afford anything anymore, because the people who provide it have to spend too much to make it available.
Legal services and medical services are expensive because lawyers and doctors rack up insane education expenses.
Food is too expensive because more and more of it is imported and/or the end product of a crazy long production-chain.
People have to demand higher salaries because of the cost of living, but aren't getting them. Look at me: I don't care about getting rich. I just want the bills paid. Unfortunately, that means I pretty much can't take a job for less than $40-50K/yr, because of the cost of childcare, insurance, etc.
This means that my chances to do what I actually want to do for living are miniscule. Nobody's going to pay me that much without years of experience. Add to that that I'd likely need to move the family to D.C., and I really couldn't take anything below $60K/yr. And we're one of the better cases...our mortgage is quite affordable, we have no car payments, and my student loan isn't that bad. But that $30K in debt I racked up getting a Master's Degree? HUGE mistake. My master's isn't worth the paper it's printed on. It's a fucking cerebral hood ornament.
Part of me just wants to say "All of this can go fuck itself", find a quiet piece of land somewhere, and just do subsistence farming and try to enjoy the years I have left.