The young adults of America have been sold a dream for their entire lives: go to the right school, get the right job, buy a house, and live the American Dream. Ha. The American Dream is dead, school is a debt trap, and young people are losing the economic race with the old.

Look, everyone got screwed in the recession. Rich people, who have all the money, actually lost the most money, arithmetically speaking! But that doesn't matter, since rich people quickly recovered from the recession, whereas non-rich people still have not. (Also, rich people who lose a large percentage of their net worth tend to still be rich, meaning the pain they experience is academic.) Today, Bloomberg surveys the economic recovery rates of young people ("Gen Y" as well as "millennials," strictly speaking) vs. old(er) people, and finds a replay of the rich vs. poor recovery dynamic:

For households headed by someone 40 years old or younger, wealth adjusted for inflation remains 30 percent below 2007 levels on average, according to research by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Net worth for older Americans has already recouped the losses.

Why are younger people lagging so fucking far behind the olds in the financial recovery? Because of student loan debt, a weak job market, and a lesser ability to bounce back from the decline in home prices, for those young people unlucky/ overoptimistic/ foolish enough to have purchased a home before the housing crash. And if you think that older people staring at retirement are going to support any moves that they think might endanger their own financial security: Haha! Good luck! Btw older people have all of the political power, as well!

And don't forget the real reason young people are screwed: ["Millennials" joke].

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