We built an economy that rewards asset owners and pulled the ladder up behind us, then blamed the young.

When effort stops producing reward, the behavior fades. Gen Z is reading its environment accurately.

A coordinated youth revolt is impossible; they lack the decades of networks any uprising would require.

Synchronized withdrawal across strangers signals a shared cause, like a crowd opening umbrellas in rain.

Every few weeks, a fresh headline arrives to scold the young: They refuse to work, they will not finish their degrees, a surprising number will not even bother getting a driver's license. The tone tends to range from puzzled disappointment to open contempt, as if an entire cohort woke up one morning and chose softness.

I want to offer a different reading, and I want to start by pointing the finger where it belongs, which is at people my age and older.

Economic Barriers Facing Younger Generations

I spent over seven years in finance before moving into academia. I saw, up close, how the machinery of the modern economy runs and whom it is built to reward. The system runs the way it does by design. We built it, we optimized it for quarterly returns, for asset appreciation that benefits people who already own them, and for a labor market that asks more each year while offering less in return. We pulled the ladder up behind us and then expressed shock that the people below stopped climbing.

Consider what we constructed. Housing costs have outpaced wages for so long that the old promise, "Work hard and you will own a home," now reads like a folktale. A college degree, once a reliable engine of mobility, often arrives strapped to debt that follows a person for decades. Entry-level work........

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