All good points. We definitely have some parasitical forces in our economy, and they are taking their toll. Anyone that says otherwise isn't really paying attention.
As someone that experienced a wonderful time coming into the software industry in the late 80s, it's all very depressing. I want this same experience for young people today, but it's very hard to fight such macro trends. I think the answer is going to have to be at some point "stop playing this version of the game".
It's very very tense right now, under the surface. It would be very interesting to know what proportions of the population broken out by 5-year segments have adequate employment and stable housing. I have a notion that things are going to unwind in a rapid exothermic way at a certain critical level of age & responsibility. At 18 you can tolerate a fair bit of risk; at 35, married with a kid, you want to move out of "survival" mode. I would guess that as the "millenials" trailing edge gets into mid-late 20s, changes will be aggressively pushed to a far harder degree. The post-millenial generation is said to be a fair bit socially different (but I havn't looked into how that change is transpiring) - and they will have an even shorter end of the stick.
Speculatively, an interesting project would be to build out a dashboard to deduce instability based on age & employment.
None of that relates to software, but we see software face to face. I think software is the most affluent part of society right now in general. Other industries appear to be much more unequal with their workers much more exploited.
As someone that experienced a wonderful time coming into the software industry in the late 80s, it's all very depressing. I want this same experience for young people today, but it's very hard to fight such macro trends. I think the answer is going to have to be at some point "stop playing this version of the game".