Thank you. You’re spot on with my thoughts. I used to consider myself “upper middle class” with the mobility to do what I wanted. However if I’m having trouble, and I know what the median income is, I know for a fact it’s 100x worse for someone in that bracket. It’s just plain gotten out of control.

Honestly the measure of what I use for “are you rich?” Is “can I survive a long term medical issue (or any other “big” issue) without it causing an impact to my current quality of living?” and for 99%+ of this county that is no longer possible.

There's another side of this though, which is that his "American dream" single family home should simply not exist in large numbers in the location he wants. It should be prohibitively expensive to own an entire acre in such areas, because that acre should house somewhere between a dozen or a few hundred people depending on the density. The attitude of "I want a single family home within walking distance of the subway" is ridiculous. If detached housing is your priority you should absolutely need to move farther out into the suburbs.