It's wild to watch all of these takes as though the jury is still out, or it's gonna happen sometime in the future when the last boomer dies. It started happening before 2008, was accelerated by the financial collapse, and is affecting Gen Z as well as Millennials. Neoliberalism's failure caused the center to fall out of western politics. If you look at polling, only older, wealthier, or college educated people are really holding the middle together. They're a shrinking group. Our political future is populist, whether that's on the right in the form of fascism or on the left in the form of communism is up to those movements, but it's happening.
The effects were only seen in 2008 because that's when the modern 'everything ponzi' first started to waver. But that die was already cast before 2008 and many people were already fucked but just didn't know it yet. I think one of the biggest differences between Millenials is that initial period of ignorance allowed Millennials to be optimistic and that optimism was good for their mental health. The poor mental health of Gen Z has made their bad situation worse. In general Millennials didn't expect social security to last until retirement, the Gen Z people I've met do not expect society to last. Like Gen Z, I do think there will be an economic implosion, possibly precipitated due to a lost war. The Suez Crisis of 1956 marked the end of the UK empire, history might repeat and the failure to rope in the Houthis might mark the start of the end of the US empire. I think Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, etc may end up finding out that their retirement investments are no longer valuable and which will really suck for everyone except Gen Z which didn't have any to begin with. But maybe the slow process of economic death drags on for many more decades and the Boomers get to die out in peace.
