William Atkinson

Zoomers like me don’t realise how lucky we are

For millennials like me, talkin’ ’bout our generation usually involves complaining. We Generation Zs – or zoomers – can’t seem to catch a break. Even before the pandemic, we were on track to be the first generation worse off than our parents since the Great Depression. It takes us twenty-somethings six times as long to save for a deposit as forty years ago. Having been told by Tony Blair a university education was essential, we leave, saddled with debt, to confront an over-stuffed and unwelcoming graduate market. After spending 2020 locked up against a disease that has a limited impact on young people, we face unemployment and decades of higher taxes to pay off Dishi Rishi’s debt mountain. Unsurprisingly, we’re a tad cross.

Generation Z has found a scapegoat for their plight: boomers. Used across the Atlantic for decades to describe those lucky babies born post-WW2 into rising affluence, government largesse and expanding expectations, it has become a catch-all term of abuse from those of us under 30.

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