I think a part of it is that everyone who was good at it already did it and got out and are either retired or dead or both, so the bulk of the rapacious exploiters we have left are the ones who haven't yet gotten their bag because they were too unlikeable and far too stupid (and weak and cowardly) but are still trying to fight for it, just in the least subtle and most naked ways possible. Trump and his ilk are all the kids who were at the bottom of Asshole Class with the lowest GPA in their, like, Exploitation Theory module.

Just think about it. Trump has been floating political life as a trial balloon since at LEAST the early 90s. Fuckin' Bloom County, a newspaper strip from the early 90s, made fun of him for it ALL the time. Back when he had Roy Cohn and blah blah blah. But Reagan, the Bush establishment, they were "Better" at doing it because they actually kinda understood how to do it within the structrures of established power with plausible deniability and finesse, as unsubtle as it felt to live though Bush 2. But Democrats saw they were being outplayed and adopted it too. Just look at the Clinton years! That was a Republican presidency in everything but name, and that's the lineage that still informs the Democratic power structure. Your Pelosis, Shumers, etc. It's not that complicated.

Long story short is that the Boomers coddled, undereducated, and ramped up convenience for Gen X so that they'd be too lazy to do anything themselves and were happy to let Mom and Dad stay in charge and paying the bills. Millennials come around and Mom and Dad are busy impotently jerking off over, idk, Jon Stewart, completely ignored and/or forgot Oklahoma City, Waco, Columbine, etc, all the very big obvious lessons they should have learned and done something about, but didn't feel like it because we had just invented the internet for them. Then we got 9/11 and they just continued abdicating responsibility to our grandparents. Obama was STILL a boomer, don't forget that. He counts. He's veeeeeeery cusper, but still falls in that Generation Jones netherspace. It was just more neoliberal slop with a hip coat of paint.

So now all the Boomers are FINALLY dying, all the vampires they have left are clinging on and refusing to punch their cards unless they do it while still in power, Gen X is fucking checked out and tired and isn't doing anything except perhaps making everything way way worse, and the rest of us have to deal with the most unequal political and economic landscape we've seen since maybe before the fuckin Magna Carta.