Why Don't More People Love Audio?

At this point, prehaps someone should define "high End"

One word.....passion! An individual with Passion for good sounding music (depending on how passionate)....will naturally (come within) hunt for the gears and resources to get him or her there....(investment varies with financial status)...IMHO..(just from my personal experience).

More music is being bought now more than ever. Obviously music is important to people. Most of it through things like ITunes. Most of it is played back through headphones on ipods. Since there is a huge volume of people doing this, and lots of young people within this group, it seems to me a certain percentage of them will become interested in better playback. After market headphones are selling well. Websites like headfi are swelling in numbers. A certain percentage of these people will investigate further into audio and that will include higher end two channel setups. These are the seeds planted that is hope for the high end.

Some of us may be forgetting the unemployment and underemployment statistics that young people are facing. Maybe you are unaware of the insidious student loan trap too many of our youth have fallen into. Perhaps it has escaped your attention that wage erosion cripples the prospects for our recent college graduates.

Sit down and do the math. How does it look for kids trying to plant their flag somewhere on $40K per year? Times have changed. For those few who can't help themselves it may be possible to scrape together some of our leavings into a semblance of high end, but most won't even try. Buying a house and/or feeding their kids will crowd audio out of their thinking if, in fact, it ever gains entry.

why is there seemingly so much concern regarding a person's attitude about a hobby ?

such a concern seems like a trivial pursuit to me.