I'm very conflicted about this article. The actual facts that are cited -- the extent to which a Pell grant covers college tuition, the starting salaries of teachers v. first-year lawyers (though I'm rather skeptical of this one) -- go some distance toward persuading me that, yeah, maybe things are tougher for today's Youth than they were back in the day. But at the same time, I vividly remember being an aspiring actor in New York in the early 80s, when all my friends were similarly aspiring actors/dancers/painters/community organizers/what-have-you. And it seems to me that the Aspirers of today have a lot more demands than we did, that they effectively want a middle-class lifestyle while working only the groovy gigs. It doesn't work that way, and it never has.

When I was an Aspirer, my friends, if they lived in Manhattan (and many of them lived in Brooklyn or Queens) lived in shares or unspeakably horrible basement studios. None of us had cable TV or air-conditioning; we all lived in 4th- or 5th- or 6th-floor walkups. We bought all of our clothes at thrift shops, we cut each other's hair or opted for the 10-buck cuts on Astor Place. If we went out for food, it was for pizza or felaffel -- someplace where "dinner" cost considerably less than 10 bucks. We went dancing at sweaty, jeans-and-sneakers gay bars, leaving the glitzy clubs to the Bridge-and-Tunnel brigade. If we drank outside the house, it was Buds or Rolling Rock -- no microbrews, nothing imported, and certainly no cocktails. Nobody had health insurance or gym memberships.Nobody went out of town on vacations. The only thing we spent occasional money on was relatively bad weed; nobody could afford cocaine. And we all worked considerably more than 40 hours a week, typically at more than one job.

It's not that we were so noble or self-sacrificing -- everybody we knew was living that way. So when I read an article like this one, I can't help wondering whether these kids, today's Aspirers, aren't assuming entitlement to a whole host of pricey offerings -- broadband service, cable with premium channels, gym memberships, regular $3 lattes, good haircuts, boutique clothes and shoes, regular Cosmos, sushi a couple of times a week,1 35-hour work week, Manhattan one-bedrooms with central air, an elevator and but a single roommate -- that just weren't part of the package 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.

Checking in from London to add my vote to the "take a flat" camp. A friend just joined me, flying in from Hong Kong, and I knew she'd be exhausted and not up for dinner out, so I made scrambled duck eggs on toasted crusty bread with a salad of baby arugula, shredded Iberico ham, a vinaigrette made with homemade rhubarb vinegar, and the best tomatoes I have ever eaten in my life. I bought some first-of-the-season strawberries and cream for dessert, but she was too tired and I was too stuffed. Was it the best meal I've ever eaten? Nah, not by a long shot. But it was a damn site better than anything we could have gotten in a restaurant for twice the price -- and no place would have had the Amazing Tomatoes -- and the combination of cooking and washing up took me a grand total of ten minutes. Plus, the joys of going to the market and knowing that I could buy anything i wanted -- the bacon sold by the stall-keeper displaying 18 different kinds, the fatly gorgeous asparagus, the crumbly smoked cheese, the incredibly thick yogurt ladled from a giant mason jar -- because I had a fridge to store it in and a stove to cook it on, that was an enormous pleasure. I'm here to do business (ok, business sandwiched around eating tomatoes and going to the theater), and it's both a pleasure and a money-saver to be able to invite people over for drinks (and bits of toast spread with this killer stuff from one of the Greek stall-holders, a spread made with butternut squash, and maybe some of the smoked zucchini spread, too) rather than meeting them in wine bars, where I would drop 25 quid in the blink of an eye. Anyway, for more than a 2-day trip, I wouldn't stay in a hotel now if you paid me.