Why is money so hard to come by for the general populous?

You'd think in this day and age that it would be easier for the general public to make a comfortable living, but it seems harder than ever.

Being only 27 (28 next month) I can't speak from too much experience - I simply haven't had enough time. That being said, I hear about how difficult it was for our parent's generations and I can't help but be skeptical when they say we have it easier.

Previously, I blogged about school. This is something that means a lot to me, and I'm sure to many people - it's the difference between a mediocre income and a half-decent one, or sometimes even a really good one. Why is it that students (young and old) are required to receive education to do almost any job these days, and yet it's so difficult to get one?

I believe that minimum wage right now is hovering around $9 - $10. That's increased since I got my first job and was receiving something like $6.50 an hour. You might say that's an improvement - but you also have to consider the cost of living has gone up. In retrospect, minimum wage technically hasn't increased, because the money is still spent at the same rate it was over ten years ago.

So you take your typical teenager, working through their last years of highschool with a part time job at McDonald's. If they don't have a cell phone (ya right) or a car, they can probably save a couple grand a year.

At my local college, the cheapest tuition hovers around $3000. This does not include textbooks or any other fees - like in the case of the course that I'm going to be taking, laptops.

How are people supposed to be able to afford this on their own? Generally, we can't - which means we have to get loans. What's on loans? Interest.

This creates a mess of a circle in which we're paying even more money for school, which takes sometimes many years to pay off once we've entered the work force. 

And we're not even guaranteed a job when we graduate!

There needs to be another, better system in place. I don't have the answer, but I'd like to start that conversation.