You may be right in dissuading people.  Success is the best encouragement for the Subscription model to continue.  Unfortunately a quick google search found that the number that has signed up for the creative cloud is 3.5 million users.  At 30 bucks (american) per subscription that nets Adobe approximately (assuming the number is a round up or round down) 105 million dollars.  A month.  Or 1.2 Billion a year.  If the number holds over the course of the year that's That's not even for the most expensive package.  if it were only People like me who would only pay 9 dollars a month (Which is cheaper than spotify, cable, cellphone) for access to the latest version of adobe at that same rate would get adobe a paltry 31.5 million or over 300 million a year. three hundred seventy two million to be exact.  That is sick money.

I don't know about expectations.  Most corporations are pretty greedy.  Still, it sounds like a resounding success.

Now if I needed the entire suite for work, even as an independent contractor, I could see paying the full price and then writing it off my taxes as a business expense.  I'm betting you and I are probably closer to the same age so I know where you are coming from regarding all those bills.  I do hate the idea of paying throughout all of my working life yet when you consider bang for the buck for the creative Suite apps it would take take about years to pay for just photoshop itself and of course that doesn't count the upgrades which they make you pay for.  Not the service releases which may include a minor feature but are mostly targeted at fixes which should've been found in the first place.

If I wanted ALL of the creative suite products, buying the full monty MIGHT be the way to go.  That IS cost effective.  However, I just wanted photoshop.

Now there are questions like will Adobe get everyone subscribed and then jack up the price.  They might.  I wish there was someone cynical with facts that I could trust when making a big decision.  Like is it true that their prices have only fallen?  Right now, everyone has their own axe to grind (American Slang) so I'll have to trust that Adobe won't want tick off over 4 million people at once.  If they do, then I'll go back to using CS2.  It's 10 years old but it works.

Just so you know, if Smith-Micro does the subscription thing for PoserPro2016 I'm changing to DAZ.