Why Life Is Pretty Good But Doesn’t Feel So Great

Oren Cass, director of the think tank American Compass and a former Mitt Romney adviser, sparked a debate recently when he published a chart illustrating what he called the cost of thriving index. The chart compares median income of men with the costs of four major spending items -- housing, transportation, health care and college -- and found that the typical man doesn’t earn enough in a year to cover those four costs.

Commentators on both the political right and left were quick to point out the problems with Cass’s graph. For one thing, most workers aren’t paying college tuition at any given moment. If college costs are spread out over someone’s lifetime, they are much lower than what Cass showed. And including scholarships and grants, which Cass leaves out, would lower the cost even more.