Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the issue is US _culture_, not education (although the two are intertwined). We had too many easy years where you could take a Jack Kerouac road trip for 5 years to find yourself and then settle down to the equivalent of a cushy 6 figure job just for being a man with a pulse. Now if you do that, you will come back to find all the cushy jobs filled, and you are unqualified for anything except bottom of barrel…
At our current level of technological advancement, we should be able to get far more than a 5y Kerouac road trip before joining the grind. Where are all those supposed productivity gains going? Why are we becoming less free? (This is sort of an aside. Yes, bring all the hardworking immigrants here, please. And maybe let them have those road trips, too.)
- an ever increasing standard of living
- stonks go up to prevent a pensioner revolt and to inflate egos of billionaires
We are kind of equivocating about "the grind" though. There is the grind of a student keeping their heads in books and activities while friends play video games or party or whatever. This grind has a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of obvious graduation dates and similar rites of passage.
Then there is the grind of working at McDonalds or Walmart because that is the only opportunity left to you, and that is a grind that might easily go on forever unless you win the hunger games and get into a management track rat race.