Pretty funny that the article and the reply both implicitly assume adulthood is owning things or doing certain activities. Adulthood is being able to navigate life through adversity. Every young person I know treading water with unstable income and no support is way more ‘grown up’ than boomers complaining about having to cut back on retirement cruises.
And anyone with the potential for a future, destroyed it all as soon as they became an adult by taking on a mountain of student loan debt, only to be told that the career they paid a fortune for is being largely replaced by AI.
Have you thought about buying a house instead of an avocado???
Hey, they aren’t so tone deaf as to think avocado toast is all that stands between this generation and home ownership.
It’s actually starbucks coffee: https://fortune.com/2025/10/22/corcoran-group-ceo-says-just-as-tough-to-get-on-the-property-ladder-today-as-it-was-30-years-ago-stop-buying-starbucks-coffee-gen-z-millennials-real-esate-advice/
And if they stopped, some shitty writer will write an article whining about gen evil killing the hot served coffee industry.
That is based and factual. Everyone needs to boycott Starbucks.
Imagine renting or getting a mortgage in this shitty society with no job security.
I’ve been laid off four times in my adult life.
I had a mortgage, I couldn’t keep it. See above.
Fucking hell that’s rough
Imagine?
Are we having a deep dive into Elon and Trump’s life?
I think they feel the AI and Planitr (I don’t care if I’ve got the spelling wrong) with ICE will keep people in line
lol. buying a house? having kids? I can barely afford to EAT, let alone bring another person into the world.
Many couples are putting off marriage because they both have student loans, and they don’t want to make their credit even worse.
Worse, one might have loans, but not the other. Would you want to marry someone knowing you have to take on $100K in debt?
And yet both legacy and new media unironically tells you to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps
like the rich dude who said he could make $1M in one year, starting from homelessness. He cheated, and he still only made $60K
A murdoch tabloid says as much. its for boomer/older gen x consumption.
The only growing emotionally that needs to happen is for the American people to grow some class consciousness.
The WSJ is a right wing rag, unfit for toilet paper. No one should be surprised they publish half wit musings.
“In many ways, this age group is in a better place financially, on average, than their parents were at this age. The problem is that they don’t seem to know it.”
Yeah? What ways are those?
Is this one?
“Our expectations are so much higher today,” says Melissa Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland whose research focuses on children and family. “Generations before us didn’t expect to have large houses where every kid had a bedroom and there were multiple vacations.”
We just shouldn’t expect to have mansions for our many many kids? Fuck you. I don’t have kids, am experienced in a well paying career and I can’t afford a house at all unless I go somewhere that I can’t find the kind of work I do in. That’s not even considering the lack of kids many of us have, because we can’t afford them.
Fuck this out of touch shit. I’m so sick of these people who already got theirs telling the people who can’t do the same that it’s their own fault. This fucking article goes further than that suggesting it’s worse than our own fault because we’re better situated somehow.
Avocado toast ass argument. This country needs more guillotines.
house with every kid having a bedroom? Having anything. The smallest condo without the constant fear of losing it is all I see anyone “expecting” Don’t get me wrong I complain how my janitor father could afford what is nowadays a dilapidated mansion and is completely unachievable but I don’t expect to be able to get that. I mean. I very much would like to.
Your parents had one dollar, you have three. Much rich. Nevermind the fact that your parents one dollar was the down payment on a car and you cant afford a bowl of lettuce.
I remember reading this in an Uncle Scrooge comic when I was a kid. For context, Uncle Scrooge was explaining how money works to his nephews. The gist was “it’s not how much money, but how much it will buy that counts”.
I learned that lesson from a Scottish cartoon duck.
How many hours did I have to work for this?
I unironically use that as one of the measures I use for assessing whether something I could do is worth the effort or not. Want to try a video game? How much of my life did I have to sell to afford what it will cost? Things like that. It’s not the only consideration, of course, but it definitely is one.
They had $1.00, but the bread was 50 cents. The 30-somethings have $3.00, but bread is now $5.00, just saying how many slips of green paper a has compared to b is useless when those slips buy less and less.
The misdirection is entirely deliberate.
Guys, guys, you’re forgetting how much cheaper TVs have gotten! /s
Yeah, they cherry-pick that average income is up vs previous generations, adjusted for inflation.
Okay, but… cost of living has gone up.
Not just for the things that existed 40 years ago, but also from the new things that are necessary for maintaining a career, like broadband internet and a smartphone.
Needing a fucking subscription for your toaster or hair dryer or stairs or whatever. Having to tip your landlord.
They had a guy in the article that owes 200k in student loans! This is not apples-to-apples.
And also, so what if it’s up in average? Inequality is the worst it’s ever been. They barely sneak an asterisk in to address that, too.
They had a guy in the article that owes 200k in student loans!
Everything else can be argued when it comes to growth/wages, but by far the single most crippling issue we have in the US is massive debt to survive, and once you’re in debt, you often never get out.
We had a term for this in the middle-ages.
History repeats over and over.
yeah average means we have mcmansions now. Let me know when modal is up compared to inflation. Or average of the second and third quartile (rich is where most of it is at but poorest its to easy for it to rise without effectively doing anything for them)
Average real income (adjusted for inflation) has been pretty steady in the last 50 years for the bottom 50% bracket. The higher up you go in the income bracket the higher the growth becomes. The real income of the top 0.01% has grown by 670% in that same time. So you can see where all that extra wealth generated from 2x productivity boost has gone. Trickle up economics.
*This is for the USA, but if you look at data for other countries the tendency is the same.
UK hasn’t seen that same productivity increase but has seen the increasing inequality.
We know it’s bullshit so we stopped trying to work hard.
Average income isn’t even useful because the only salaries that have gone up are CEOs.
It’s not out of touch, its deliberate gaslighting.
It would be gaslighting if the intended audience was the young people it was talking about. But they aren’t the ones reading the Wall Street Journal.
It’s right-wing propaganda designed to confirm the existing biases of boomer haves (their real audience) toward gen-z have-nots (the smeared out-group)
Meh. There is always a pipeline of aspirants. The temporarily embarrased millionaires.
Aaaaah nooooo they actually used the words “arrested development” which is the name of the show that this quote comes from:
It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?
These days that’s not far off the truth.
I can’t afford a house at all unless I go somewhere that I can’t find the kind of work I do
I think this is a key point.
The average house prices in major cities has gone up ridiculous amounts. But, if you look at the average national house prices it isn’t as dramatic. The problem is, that there are a lot of jobs that only exist in those expensive, major cities. It doesn’t much matter if a house in the suburbs of Detroit is dirt cheap if your job doesn’t exist anywhere near Detroit.
So, you have places where the housing prices are reasonable, but nobody earns a really high wage because it isn’t one of the major metro areas in the country. Then you have places where the jobs exist but housing is completely out of reach.
Also, it seems to me like the big issue is that while some goods have become cheaper and cheaper over the years, the ones that have become prohibitively expensive are the important ones. Like, look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Food price inflation and overall price inflation have been about the same since the 80s, but since 2020 that’s not true. Since then food has become much more expensive relative to the inflating dollar. Then there’s housing (a.k.a. “shelter”) that has been outpacing inflation by a massive amount since Reagan’s time, but even worse since 2020. The only thing that has become cheaper in at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid is clothing. But, the kind of clothing that’s cheap is “fast fashion”. It’s not basic “shelter” type clothing. Maybe that has become cheaper, but enough clothing to survive was never a major expense.
The next tier up in Maslow’s hierarchy is safety needs: personal security, health and wellbeing, financial security, safety nets. This is probably the area that has been hit the hardest. Because of America’s messed up healthcare system healthcare costs are getting more and more expensive. Financial security is also a joke for most non-boomers. The US has no safety net to speak of. And personal security, in the era of Trump, I think a lot of people feel much less secure.
There are things that are part of the consumer price calculation that have been getting cheaper. But, if you can’t meet your basic needs, that really doesn’t matter. Sure, my grandpa would have been absolutely amazed with the entertainment I can get on a screen. Compared to a black and white TV a modern TV is incredibly cheap, amazingly high quality, the selection of things to watch is astounding, etc. But gramps had a steady job, a guaranteed pension, reasonable medical costs, a house that could be bought for a couple of years of salary, etc.
remove all speculation incentives from housing, fuck remove all speculation incentives full-stop, and maybe all these rich cunts will actually do something with their $ (like pay for housing to be built, since there is such a massive market for it) instead of jerk themselves off while watching lines go up.
the reason the US is falling is because we’ve built a nation of gamblers that would rather watch lines go up, and and then argue/gamble on why those lines are/arent going up, than do any actual work
the real fucked irony here is that, as a nobody working up from nothing, if you actually want to change this fucked up system and need capital to do it… by far the most time-effecient method to get it is to just syphon it out of the casino, cause all these degenerate gamblers jerking themselves off to their lines going up haven’t figured out that everybody knows the rules now…and they’re getting/going to be absolutely fleeced out of every $ they put into this bubble.
It’s more than just speculation incentives from housing. I agree that needs to be done, but it’s nowhere near enough.
A bigger issue is that with the complete mess things are in, for a lot of people near retirement age, the only asset they own is their home. That means they’re going to desperately fight to keep house prices high, and ideally to keep them going up and up. But, this completely fucks over anybody who doesn’t yet own a home.
As part of their fight to protect the value of their homes, they’ll block any new construction in the neighbourhood because it will lower the value of their homes. As a result, this blocks new, denser housing construction for anybody who needs a house. The only place where NIMBYs aren’t blocking new housing are suburbs in the middle of nowhere. And, construction companies aren’t going to be building condos or small houses out in the middle of nowhere. Those homes are going to be big, suburban homes. So, the only real hope for someone who needs a house is that someone moves out to one of these big new homes in the suburbs. But, retired people aren’t going to do that. They’re looking to downsize, if anything. So, they’re more likely to just stay in their current homes.
Basically, what’s needed is to do whatever it takes to keep houses from appreciating in value, and to go around NIMBYs who try to block densification. But, to do that, you also have to address the problem that these boomers don’t have a real safety net, and their house is the one thing they own of value. Oh, and the boomers vote and lobby effectively… so…
The housing market is just a big fucking pyramid scheme.
Stocks go up and up and up too, but they aren’t an essential good (e.g. shelter) or even tied directly to any day-to-day utility. They can also be cut into smaller increments by splitting or via fractional shares, so they remain accessible even to people with modest amounts of money to invest.
Real estate as a speculative investment has been hugely detrimental to society and has a lot of ancillary effects (e.g. sprawl and car dependency).
eh, I dont think nimby’s are as much a problem outside of the biggest-most organized cities.
our democratic participation is so shit across the board (especially at the local level) all it would take is a decently coordinated ad-campaign to sweep in whatever local government reforms you could want
the bigger issue (imo) is finding someone with the capital/connections required to get big projects like high-density housing started, who isnt also just another rich piece of shit
I got this idea for a co-op high-density construction company i’m currently fighting like hell for the seed-capital to get started. siphoning all i can off this everything-bubble while it’s lasts, not too proud of that but it’s the only way someone in my position can get the capital required
Well said. I would add to the healthcare point that the system for providing insurance through an employer is a way to tether people to a job without having to offer benefits like pensions. Why would a company need to entice a person to stay with a strong benefits package that includes the possibility of being able to retire of they can be either crippled with medical debt, chained to a job to reduce the chance of being crippled by medical debt, or both?
I am under no illusion that things were utopian for previous generations, but the idea that things are better for people broadly, and not worse in insidious ways through continual assaults on working conditions, workers rights, and ability to generate net worth is… frustrating.
Just more propaganda from the haves to the have-nots. Everything that sucks about your life is directly related to your personal lack of willpower, your unwillingness to hustle, your inability to see the ways the market moves and pivot in just the right way and at just the right moment. No, don’t look at your neighbors, stop noticing all the other crabs in the bucket, this is your shortcoming. This is because you suck. Work more hours, sacrifice more of your connection to nature and friends and family, stop asking questions. What is life if not servitude? What is existence if not submission? Stop thinking and start doing what you’re told. Don’t look up. Don’t you EVER look up.
Are those smaller houses in the room with us?
Lmao, like in 95% of the US people can’t build anything but single family houses.
I don’t know about the entirety of the country, but I do know that around me, the only affordable homes being built or sold are for people 55 years and older. It’s like a slap in the face when you’re looking for somewhere to live and oh, whoops, you’re 20 years too young!
Is the baby boomer generation even buying those places? My experience is only anecdotal, but I don’t know a single baby boomer who’s moved to a seniors-only community. It’s something my grandma did, but my parents? They’re moving to a state with a lower cost of living and getting a bigger house than the one I grew up in. 😑
Meanwhile, my best chance of having an affordable apartment requires winning a low income housing lottery. Yes, a literal lottery. That’s what decides if I’ll be living in my car or not next year (or, dread of dreads, doing what my mom keeps telling me to do and uprooting my entire life to move to a southern state like she’s doing. I told her that if I have to move, I’d rather move out of the country. I also told her that I don’t want to live anywhere where I may be left to die if I end up with an ectopic pregnancy. She’s too detached from reality to understand.)
I’ll probably live in 55+ housing when I’m of age. I specifically want a smaller home since I’m a bit of a minimalist, and of course the lower prices on these is a big draw.
It’s shitty that these are not generally accessible to younger people. But then the age restriction is probably what keeps the prices lower by limiting the marketability and competition.
I know two women who have gone through an ectopic. First very nearly died, second got lucky and caught it while it was merely urgent. They’d both be dead if we lived in a state with worse medical rights.
My partner and I thrive in a two bedroom. One room for sleep, and one studio/guest room (we’re both artists). Apparently that’s too much to ask.
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I have a burning hatred for this article, and you get to be the recipient of my rant about it, but I don’t mean any of this as an attack on you. I don’t think it will read that way, but I want to say it ahead of time, because I am inspired to do a much more full analysis of why this article, and its author, are bullshit.
I do not think it’s accurate to say the author is not arguing that this generation is at fault. The quotes that were chosen, the data that was emphasized, and the piece’s structures all point toward a kind of “soft-blame” thesis. That thesis being that thirty-somethings could have reached traditional milestones but didn’t, mostly because of their own choices and/or unrealistic expectations. The author never seriously pushes back on that implication.
Let’s look at what she actually includes and what she doesn’t challenge. Here are some examples of implied agency (“it’s their choice”):
1. Choosing high-cost cities despite better options.
“He’s paying $1,700 in monthly rent to live with roommates in Brooklyn.”
“When it became clear his dreams of homeownership were not achievable in New York, he recently got help from his parents to close on a fixer-upper in his hometown of Easton, Pa.”
“She knows her salary would go farther in her hometown of Philadelphia, but she prefers to stay in L.A.”
These aren’t framed as traps. They’re framed as conscious choices. The author could have emphasized the structural necessity of clustering near job opportunities or family networks, but she doesn’t. Instead, she highlights that both subjects prefer expensive metros, implying that their cost-of-living struggles are at least partly self-inflicted. It also implies they could move to lower cost of living areas and not suffer a wage decrease as well - it’s not so straightforward as is strongly implied.
2. Refusing to downsize or cut luxuries.
“Inflation has raised the price of small luxuries, such as her Spotify subscription, but she doesn’t want to give them up.”
The “small luxuries” quote feels deliberately included to make readers think, so you can afford Spotify but not a mortgage? Avocado toast. The author does not counter that framing by mentioning that skipping a subscription will do next to nothing to make home ownership feasible; she leaves the quote to speak for itself, which effectively endorses the idea that younger adults’ priorities are the real issue.
3. Idealistic standards in relationships.
“He’d also rather stay single than compromise on the wrong fit.”
Again, the author does not provide commentary pushing back on this. There’s no line like, “This desire for compatibility reflects how the marriage market itself has changed.” Instead, she lets the reader infer that they’re single because they’re picky.
4. Framing “freedom from old pressures” as the problem.
“Growing up with less pressure to follow the same narrow route to adulthood… has raised the bar for what these milestones look like.”
This line subtly redefines the freedom to choose different life paths as the reason people are stuck. It is not framed as an adaptation to changing circumstances, but rather as an indulgence that prevents commitment. It comes across as an inversion of sympathy: what sounds like neutral observation actually functions as a subtle criticism.
5. Self-focus over family formation.
“Motherhood, she says, is a ‘nonstarter.’ ‘Kids become the first priority,’ says Fuller. ‘I’m still figuring myself out as a priority.’”
There’s no attempt to contextualize Fuller’s choice within the structural realities that make parenthood materially and logistically prohibitive. No weight given to things like the extreme cost of childcare, stagnant wages relative to housing, inadequate parental leave, limited healthcare coverage, and the lack of systemic support for working families. The author’s choice to close the entire article on this quote gives it enormous rhetorical weight. The final word is that adulthood is being deferred because people are self-absorbed or uncertain, not because society made parenthood impossible. Remember the power given to the final word here, because I’m going to do it too - partially as an example supporting this point.
What you pointed out were the author’s attempts to hedge around that main argument, and here’s why I find those hedges disingenuous. While the author does acknowledge economic hardship a few times, those moments feel more like token gestures than genuine balance. The references are brief, mostly numerical, and each one is immediately undercut by a counterpoint that shifts attention back to personal attitudes and choices.
1. “The conventional explanation… is that they can’t afford to grow up… Yet this doesn’t quite explain what’s going on.”
This sentence dismisses affordability as the dominant factor before showing any serious data that it might be. It sets up the rest of the article to downplay structural forces.
2. “It’s true that 30-somethings have had a run of tough economic luck… But the numbers paint a more complicated picture.”
That “but” flips sympathy into skepticism. The article follows that turn by citing Labor Department data claiming that median wages for full-time workers ages 35-44 have risen 16% since 2000 (from about $58,500 to $67,600, adjusted for inflation) and Federal Reserve data showing a 66% rise in wealth for 30-somethings between 1989 and 2022 (from roughly $62,000 to $103,000). Those figures are plausible but not clearly sourced, and they rely on broad aggregates rather than detailed, verifiable cohort data. More importantly, the article treats these averages as evidence of improved financial footing without accounting for inflation in housing, childcare, healthcare, tuition, debt, transportation, or general cost of living which are the real choke points for this generation. In that context, the interpretation is under-contextualized at best and misleading at worst: aggregate gains say little about actual affordability or distributional reality.
3. “To be sure, financial averages are just that.”
That’s a classic hedge. It is a single sentence acknowledging inequality, that is immediately followed by more emphasis on choice and mindset. It exists to claim objectivity but doesn’t alter the argument or really acknowledge factors that do not support the thesis I suggested above.
4. “A sizable share of this generation is worse-off than their parents were.”
True, but she immediately pivots back to “still, growing up with less pressure…” This concession is rhetorical cover. It gives the appearance of balance while keeping the causal blame with the subjects’ attitudes.
The reason that all feels so disingenuous to me is that the issue isn’t just what the author says, but how the piece is built. Every quote chosen blames individuals (high expectations, luxuries, refusal to compromise) and is left unchallenged. She gives experts who blame attitude (Reeves, Kearney) far more space than anyone who would highlight structural barriers. When she finally acknowledges real problems she calls them “complicated,” softens them with “averages,” then shifts back to “expectations.”
If she truly disagreed with the “it’s their fault” narrative, she could have included economists who emphasize wage stagnation relative to cost of living, systemic childcare shortages, or the collapse of affordable housing. She didn’t. That omission is itself an argument. So yes, technically the article hedges against my initial read of it, but I think it is fair to suggest that those hedges are thin disclaimers attached to a piece that, in practice, amplifies the exact worldview it pretends to interrogate:
“Young people say they can’t afford to grow up, but actually they can; they’re just pickier, more self-focused, and less willing to sacrifice.”
That’s the message readers are left with, because that’s where the author ends the story and anchors every example. The quotes weren’t balanced. They were curated to support a moral narrative of generational fault, and they are never truly refuted, which is functionally the same as agreeing with them.
Wow, thank you for sharing your thoughts! Can I subscribe?
I’d like to subscribe to your rants. This was an exquisite post.
Well thank you. If I’m honest I was a little worried it would just come across as unhinged, because that article had/has me legitimately angry.
That was straight up insightful, well done!
Not at all. I read the whole thing expecting that I would get bored of some rambling like is often the case, but here I am having read all the way through. There’s something so good about reading an articulate angry rant that ends when it needs to.
applause
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Always a pleasure to see such a thoughtful contribution to the discussion.
You have access to more things, but less means to actually access them. These people are way out of touch. Heck, most of them think illegal immigrants actually get a free ride while they have e to pay for everything. Can you be more obtuse?
we are rich but we don’t know it. we’ll that’s… rich.
Whoa, I feel like I jumped back in time 10 years when these corporate meat-riders were blaming us for their beer businesses failing while simultaneously telling us the reason we’re struggling is that we’re being irresponsible with our money. The “arrested development” is the USA’s disillusionment with capitalism.
I think lack of accountability is a common trait among americans in general though. Everything is someone else’s fault. The individual is sacrosanct. They can do no wrong.
Everyone’s a future billionaire here, seemingly. “Fuck you get money”, should be the official motto.
It’s because we’re all accepting this unfair system even though the social contract has been broken. The first step is to stop accepting this system.
Most of us are preoccupied with survival.
Most of us just realized long ago the game is fucking rigged so what’s the fuckin point.
Been saying all this shit since 6th or 7th (stupid meme not intended) grade when I saw the writing on the wall. It’s fucking annoying that only since the COVID lockdowns does it appear anyone else started seeing it, too.
Covid showed many people it didn’t have to be this way. The ppp loans that were appropriately used to pay staff that had to quarantine. (Lots of them were abused.) The extended unemployment benefits, some states expanded Medicaid, the roll out of work from home on a vast scale. I feel you though. I’m 45, and as a 20 year old it was clear the system was rigged.
I mean, I’m not going to turn away allies just because they woke up later. I might be a little suspicious, but allies are allies.
And to be fair, most of the people seeing it now are the generations after mine, so they weren’t even around when I was in middle school.
Most people don’t care until it impacts them personally. I don’t love it, but it’s just how people work. I hate that the accelerationists may have been right.
God that sends chills down my spine. I never thought of it that way. I always thought accelrationists were just opportunists, but you may be right in that they aim to have as many people personally harmed by the system so that they might all wake up and form a resistance.
I think I figured out I was never going to make it back in 2015 - 2017. When I was in my mid twenties. I rented shitty shared flats with tenants I didn’t like (one even stole property from me) and I also lived in a crack den, a place they sent people to, after they served their prison sentence. Meth and whores from time to time. Lots of passive-aggressive crap in the TV room that tenants obviously learned from prison. I heard that in prison people fight over what to watch on TV, so people were anal about rules in that crack den. They lived like they were still locked up.
In Capitalist America, milestones bypass you!
