As school closures went on and on from 2020 to 2022, followed by mask and vaccine mandates, industry spokesmen settled on a pitch designed to justify the practice. The kids are resilient. They said it over and over, month after month. Why did they think this would work to cover up the barbarism of what was unfolding? Probably because no one wants to say “My kid is not resilient.”
In fact, that one phrase gave up the whole game. The point of adults is not to create abusive settings that the kids have to shake off later. In doing so, society was failing in its most fundamental duty of care to the young. It was a chilling period in which the adults in charge decided that the next generation just didn’t matter as much. If there was ever a clear indication of a broken civilization, this was it.
In this entire period, the kids were being neglected, disregarded, and dismissed. They were condemned to boredom, force-fed digital content, and robbed of friendship. The best the adults could come up with was that life is hard and that they would be just fine. In fact, they weren’t fine. A generation lost two years of schooling and has not caught up. More than that, they were traumatized by neglect, told that digital tools are a fine substitute for human connection.
It was the first generation to experience this brave new world. They hated it. They are scarred by it, maybe permanently. Psych drugs are rampant as a supposed solution for depression. Suicide rates are high. Illiteracy has never been this pervasive. Broken emotions, broken families, broken trust—these are the marks of Generation Z, the COVID-19 generation now grasping their way toward adulthood.
They were and are experiments. They were the lab rats in a game designed by scientists and elite planners. No one knows better than these young people that it has not worked. They are looking at their futures and are profoundly aware that they face a far less hopeful one than their parents.
The economic prospects for them are grim, more so than in living memory. In one generation, home ownership has moved from difficult to impossible. They are starting their careers with more debt than any generation in history, already weighed down and hobbled in their financial choices. Their pick of jobs is increasingly limited in a labor marketplace riddled with fake postings and encumbered with thickets of bureaucracy.
They have little to fall back on but their deprecated degrees: no work experience, few skills, and little awareness of the real world of adults. Making matters worse, their degrees do not even signify an education unless it pertains to a specific industry, such as engineering or accounting. The holders of these degrees are not, in fact, erudite but merely indoctrinated.
The world of work they enter, if they are lucky enough to break in at all, is prison-like in its demands and mandates, having far less to do with skill than mere compliance. It is stultifying of creativity, largely because of legal risk aversion; human resource departments; diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities; and endless layers of management. The gray grimness of the scene is not exciting and stimulating but dreary and dull.
Small business is a wonderful option, but the trajectory of industrial structures puts a premium on buyouts, not building. To be acquired by something larger is the goal. The small business that builds organically and with integrity is an endangered species. The employees have to go along for the ride, as their positions are tossed from one holder to another, where branding and loyalty are malleable according to whatever private equity firm is willing to absorb the mountains of corporate debt.
This is a new world, born mostly within the past two decades of zero-interest rates and wild credit expansion that has made normal competition on price and quality impossible. This fiat machinery uses its labor resources as fodder.
To be sure, the kids have lots of digital toys. They have phones that display dopamine-generating content. They are free to be surveilled, tracked, and monitored and to download thousands of applications for borrowing money and paying companies. They can bank online. They can monitor their steps. They can like posts and FaceTime. They can stream movies and music. They are surrounded by beeps, noises, and notifications.
In other words, this generation has unlimited opportunities to be entertained. They are already sick of it all. They are tired of the preening and pretending on social media, the fashion pushes from influencers, the toxic content of political debate, and the information overload that is wholly lacking in wisdom and meaning.
What they lack are meaningful opportunities to live lives of significance and achievement by virtue of their own volition. The barriers seem nearly impossible to overcome. Their debts remove options and yet presses them into service, and for what? That is not clear. Where is the direction, the meaning, the reward?
Life for their parents was better. Life for their grandparents was better still. Their great-grandparents had the ideal. Employment opportunities were everywhere. Schools were good and community-controlled. The middle-class home had one source of moderate income—the breadwinning dad—whose income could support ownership, schooling, and a good life for several children.
This seems unthinkable now. It’s true that this generation lacked TikTok, but they had what it is that people want: a good life, good families, safe communities, coherent cultures, and freedom. We contrast this with failing cities, failing infrastructure, the menace of crime, and radical economic uncertainty.
The most bitter aspect of this whole bargain is that Gen Z did what they were told they were supposed to do. They showed up to class. They got the grades. They were nice to others and minded the political game. They memorized all the bromides. They stayed on the conveyor belt built by adults that promised some great result at the end.
The endpoint has arrived, and there is nothing for them. And many among this generation see no real way out. They are desperate to live a good life but cannot possibly afford it and see few opportunities to change their prospects.
Let us offer some possible ways out. They need to be given some leg up in the job marketplace. I might suggest the complete elimination of income and payroll taxes for everyone younger than the age of 30. In addition, new arrangements need to be made outside minimum wage laws and strictures on health insurance. The supply of housing can be vastly increased through dramatic deregulation and the liberalization of zoning restrictions.
Business enterprises outside the corporate rat race should be completely deregulated, and that includes sectors such as agriculture, education, and services of all sorts. The U.S. economy is stagnated because of regulations, taxes, and labor litigation. It’s a disaster.
Inflation must be stopped, which means unplugging the money machine.
Trump’s executive orders are fine, but they are not enough to inspire long-term confidence. Congress needs to act to save this generation.
What has been done to Gen Z truly qualifies as moral dereliction to the point of outright criminality. Society owes these kids a better life and a happier future, and it needs to start now. The world we work to improve now is that which they will inherit and pass on to their kids, who one hopes will fare better.
