The generational wealth gap isn’t about work ethic—it’s about economic warfare disguised as meritocracy. Boomers built equity on minimum wage jobs while zoning laws now prevent duplexes. Their Cadillacs cost less than today’s used Corollas.
Social media didn’t create narcissism—it monetized it. The real hustle culture scam? Convincing kids to trade sleep for side gigs so landlords can buy third vacation homes.
The system’s not broken. It’s functioning exactly as designed: extracting youth labor until retirement becomes mythological. But keep arguing about avocado toast—the banks love watching tenants fight over crumbs.
What’s truly fucked is that it costs more to be poor than rich and it takes substantial money to accumulate wealth.
When a rich person buys a product, like a pair of winter boots, they will purchase a pair of high quality that will last many seasons. A poor person buying cheap boots will have them wear out faster and they’ll need to be replaced much sooner, so they’ll have to keep buying boots periodically. By spending more at the outset, the rich person spends less in the long run. You can see this with William Sonoma cookware. Each item is the last “that thing” that you’ll ever need. Only things like plates that can be dropped and broken will even need to be repurchased.
As for building wealth, you have to have enough money to invest to build wealth. This can be by buying a house that appreciates in value or by investing in the market. You can’t throw a thousand dollars into the market and have it appreciate in a meaningful way. You have to have real money to make anything unless you’re risking it all looking for a unicorn. This is why hedge funds make so much. They can afford to throw money at everything that has an opportunity to be a unicorn. The handful of successful unicorns offset the rest that go bust. A regular person can’t do this; even most wealth people can’t do this. For the rest, investing in “safe” funds will generate a smaller return over a longer period of time. But how can you access this avenue if you’re living paycheck to paycheck or an emergency car repair could wipe out your savings?
It’s a perverse and lousy system. And the cracks have been showing for quite some time. I believe now we’re at the end of the ride. The illusion of capitalism as a good system is continually eroding and it’s all going to be downhill from here. We’re going to get squeezed, companies are going to screw us harder and jack up prices, and everything is going to get worse, worse, worse until the mask is fully off and the evil of the system is obvious to anyone clear-eyed enough to understand why living is hell. But some people will still think the reason for their misery is drag queens and immigrants, rather than the wealthy people they admire. And keeping that fight going is how they distract us from what would really solve our problems: a drastic reduction of wealth for the very top.
I hope more people become aware of the existing class-war, because it’s been active this whole time; it’s just that the ones currently winning didn’t declare war openly, but in whispers among themselves.
it takes substantial money to accumulate wealth.
Yeah, this is huge.
Right now you need a half mil cash invested and stable investments to start seeing a measurable return. A mil before you might think investing is worth it. Two mil and retirement might be something you could realistically consider and have a life. 3 and now you can have a real retirement.* This doesn’t include a CoL increase starting now until when you retire, $3 mil today will get you $150k before taxes and any major expenses like mortgage or medical. In 20 years who knows, it might take 5 mil to retire if everything hasn’t turned into a shitshow otherwise.
(*With a conservative 5% estimate on return and not touching the principal).
In my day you had to put in the footwork, walking around until you found an unoccupied house and then that one was yours.
And before that, you’d just wait for the government to clear all the natives from an area, saunter over and plant a post with your name on it.
Land stealing is in American DNA
It took me 20+ years of 40+ hours of work a week (when I could get it) to be able to afford a house, doing without things like eating out, having a cellphone, going on vacations. But then, I’m no boomer. Boomers started being born in 1945 and ended in 1964; that means that today, they’re between 60 and 80 years old.
I’m pretty sure that at this point, Gen Z will find that it’s Gen X and Millennials who are questioning their work ethic… and not the work ethic of ALL of Gen Z, just those who expect everything to be handed to them as if they were boomers.
Yeah, the housing market sucks, and it has got progressively worse over the past 50 years. But then I remember that when my parents built their house, the oil crisis was in full swing, they’d just seen their savings vanish in the market crash, and they lived for a year in the shell of a house they built with their own hands — they’d been able to afford land in the middle of nowhere, and ran out of money part way through construction. They eventually finished it and got back on their feet.
The big thing today is that very few people are willing to go buy property in the middle of nowhere and risk starvation or exposure and 10 years of their lives to make it all work.
And I’m not saying they should have to; there were socially progressive programs put in place to make things better for this generation — and they failed. So now we’re back to the 1800s as far as social security and healthcare, and have to make the best of it.
Buying property in the middle of nowhere is genx shit. I’d have to go 4 hours outside of nowhere before land prices started becoming realistically affordable, but I’m one of those entitled millenials who expects to live somewhere where I can also have a job.
The challenge these days is finding a “middle of nowhere” place that’s affordable AND actually has reliable high speed Internet.
Hi, millennial here.
Anyone questioning the work ethic of gen z is themselves lazy, stupid, entitled, and has never worked a day in their life.
Life in the US and West in general is harder now than at any point in the last 60 years. Gen z works more hours for lower pay than you did at the same age, or than I did. And I worked a lot of hours for shit pay.
I will never own a house. Moving to the middle of nowhere doesn’t work, there’s no jobs and the houses arent much cheaper. It will take the death of capitalism or massive crippling depopulation for me to own a home. These are incontrovertible facts, and its worse for the average Gen z or alpha.
Anyone got a link to the TikTok video? It’s removed from TikTok from what I could find.
