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Why Gen Z Feels Broke While Boomers Built Empires: The Shocking Truth About the Wealth Gap
What really happened to the American Dream — and why younger generations are paying the price.
Introduction: A World of Unprecedented Wealth
Never in history have we lived in such a rich world. The world economy has generated an astonishing increase in the amount of goods and services it produces in just 10 years compared to that of the first 5,000 years of human history. Modern technology has provided us with everything from material abundance to health improvements to greater access to knowledge, convenience, and less boredom every day.
But this largess has not been evenly shared across society or generations.
The Historical Intergenerational Bargain
Children, in the course of most of human history, could expect to live lives that looked a lot like their parents’ lives. Progress was slow, and almost everyone’s focus had to be on obtaining food, so there were few resources and little time left over for anything else.
The industrial revolution and our technology upended this. Once people didn’t have to worry about survival quite so much, the world…
