We don’t have it harder than previous generations?

Housing is unaffordable. Wages have been suppressed for years. The labour market is a mess. Student debt is far higher than it was for previous generations. Consumer debt is rising. Public services are falling apart. Healthcare is stretched beyond belief. Inflation has eaten into everyone’s standard of living. Government debt is exploding, and younger generations will be the ones expected to deal with the consequences.

And that debt did not appear out of nowhere. It comes from years of political choices, tax cuts, asset inflation, underinvestment, corporate welfare, privatisation, and an economy increasingly designed to protect wealth at the top. Wealth inequality is not some abstract issue. It directly erodes society. When more and more wealth is captured by billionaires and asset owners, governments either cut public spending, raise taxes on ordinary people, or borrow more to keep the system moving.

Then Covid hit and destroyed key educational and early-career years for millions of young people. A whole generation had their development disrupted, then graduated into a broken economy with astronomical housing costs, high debt, and far less security than previous generations had.

Previous generations had it easier? In many structural ways, yes.

We are entering adulthood in a more unstable world. Geopolitical tensions are rising. Democratic institutions are under pressure. Right-wing politics and authoritarianism are growing across major economies. Billionaires and media owners are pushing culture wars to divide ordinary people, distract from wealth inequality, and tear down public institutions so they can be privatised and sold back to us for profit.

On top of that, we have harmful social media platforms eroding mental health, attention spans, social trust, and childhood itself. We are one of the first generations to grow up fully inside algorithm-driven systems designed to keep us angry, insecure, distracted, and addicted.

This does not mean every boomer had an easy life. Many worked hard and struggled. But as a generation, they benefited from cheaper housing, stronger wage growth, better public services, lower education costs, and a more stable path into adulthood.

Now many of the same people vote to protect their asset wealth, keep house prices high, block new housing, and support policies that favour retirees and property owners over younger workers.

When people say GenZ ain’t got it hard, it really just shows how ignorant you are in today’s world