Boomer NYU professor says Gen Z’s lazy label comes from zero faith in the payoff of hard work—and a fear that the world will end in 20 years anyway
https://fortune.com/2025/08/26/nyu-professor-suzy-welch-gen-z-baby-boomer-financial-security-student-loans-debt-housing-lazy-stereotype/
Posted by FUSeekMe69
9 Comments
Yeah fuck those kids and their lack of hope.
I think that’s probably part of it, and probably fair, but it’s a lot more than that honestly. A lot of these kids’ parents have totally failed them. They coddle them until they’re between 18 and 25ish. They do everything for them. Apply for their jobs, call their bosses, call their professors, arrange for people to hire them, try to do all their banking and tax stuff for them. They even return phone calls for them. My friend was telling me she had a mom call her at work for an adult “kid” because “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a scam for him.” And then it’s like one day they decide, “Ok. You’re an adult now. Time to go be an adult…” But they’ve literally never taught them how to be an adult. They don’t know how to do anything themselves. It’s a recipe for becoming a miserable, anxious, depressed adult. And literally no one else out here has the time or energy to be “raising” your adult kid for you when they get out in the world.
I feel for them. There’s not a lot to do for the kids that are adults now, but for younger kids parents need to get a grip. Stop being their BFF. Stop coddling them. Stop protecting them from every disappointment, struggle, etc. They need to learn to function in the world so that when they are adults…they’re already prepared to be one. It’s a rough world out there. No need to make it harder on them by raising them to be incompetent adults.
I agree with her. The future of the world, and even more so the US, is too bleak now.
Massive wealth and income inequality, rising right wing extremism and authoritarianism, the war on truth.
Why would I devote all my energy to engage in a system that produces this output?
It’s always mommy’s fault.
Millennial here. tbh, I don’t blame gen z for acting this way (within reason):
– wage stagnation and below inflation raises
– ridiculous amount of student loans needed to obtain a degree
– trigger happy layoff culture
– out of control rent and housing prices
– (and now) out of control grocery prices
We as millennial had it tough in our 20s already, but I can’t imagine being in 20s in the current environment.
As a boomer/Gen-X myself, I respect her willingness to acknowledge that for most of Gen Z, we’re the villains in the story. We stole our childrens’ futures so we could party a little longer and then we have the nerve to lob insults at them for feeling hopeless and abandoned.
The world will not end in 20 years.
The **world** is fine. The **people** are fucked.
Earth has survived worse than us, but our civilization won’t survive global warming. Billionaires are buying apocalypse-proof islands and bunkers, so why sacrifice myself for a dead-end career?
Pascal’s Wager posits that the rational act is to believe in God, because if God exists then you get to go to heaven, and if he doesn’t then nothing happens anyway.
In spite of that very reasonable argument, as a lifelong atheist, I cannot bring myself to believe in a higher power.
Gen Z is in the same spot wrt the end result of hard work.
I worked so fucking hard for years. Raises never came, friends and family of higher ups got positions they had no place in….
The promises of boomers are consistent in the fact that they are lies.