I think these people need to get a grip on economic reality. To me, one of the most important lessons anyone can take from the FIRE lifestyle is simply "Money will not buy you happiness". It seems no matter what amount of money people are earning, they always feel like they are not the "truly wealthy ones". I have been around extremely high earning individuals, as well as some that are extremely high net-worth individuals. Many of their conversations devolve into comments about how the condo building their friend lives at is so much nicer, or they only have x number of acres, but their friend has a large sprawling ranch, or in another case, "well, I'm not one of the billionaires, and so life is kind of hard" said without irony.
If you are someone who is stuck on the consumption hamster wheel, I can see how these things could be difficult. If you are someone who has always saved, even a little, as your income grows you get excited by seeing "just how much" you can put away this year. I have done that for a while, and still have the ability to frankly waste plenty of money on things that i do not need, but I find enjoyable (be it new furniture, a trip, a nice meal out now and then, etc.). I have yet to meet someone who said to me the one thing that made me happier than anything else in the world was buying that Louis Vuitton bag. Typically, what I hear his more along the lines of "Oh, I love this bag. I saw how everyone else had one for years, and I just felt I had to have it".
That said, as income inequality increases, these issues are going to become exacerbated. The family with two $150k earners can much more easily afford childcare costs to be "deducted" from their earnings than the family with a say $60k earner and a $45k earner. The lower income household might decide they are better off reducing their earnings and having the $45k earner stay home and raise the kids, or adopt a part time schedule so they can be home as soon as they are back from school when they are at that age. Whether they "farm out the work" of raising the kids, or they have one of the earners work less or not at all, they are costing themselves a significant amount of $$s in their wealth building journey.
To me, the article just affirms how much the "middle class" lifestyle has changed. As long as housing costs, automobile costs, HEALTHCARE costs, and child rearing expenses and college tuition are extremely unaffordable for the middle class, people are going to struggle.
