Intel Mac :: Printed Text Doesn't Match Size Of Onscreen Text

Mac screen resolution is getting higher and higher, which is nice, but the downside is that we seem to have lost "what you see is what you get." I have set the default document size of Text-Edit to about the size of an 8 1/2 x 11 document, which fits easily on the screen. I have what appears to be a single page of text. It all easily fits in the document window. The headline fits across the width of the page. But when I choose Print, the print preview shows that the text is going to spill out onto two sheets of paper.  I exit out of the print document and reduce the text size so that it all prints out on one sheet of paper. The problem is, the size of the text onscreen is now TINY! It looks like it's about 6 point while the printed text looks like it's about 12 point! No WYSIWYG!  When I revert the document to the way it was originally, where it was going to print out on two sheets of paper, and then hold my printed document up next to the screen, the printed size matches the onscreen size almost perfectly, even though, if printed out at this size, the text would spill out onto two pages and be huge. In other words, 18 point size text prints out at about 12 points and 12 pt text prints out at about 6pts, so there's about a 6pt difference in how text looks onscreen and how it prints out. Again, No WYSIWYG! My older Macs had much lower-resolution screens, but text printed out at about the same apparent size on screen. I know the original Macs had 72dpi screens so that they would closely match the printed size of text, and I like the fact that monitors keep getting better, but is there a way around this problem of printed text not matching the size of onscreen text?

Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)