Is Gen Z’s America’s Lost Generation?

The Lost Generation Didn't Lose Itself—It Was Set Up to Fail The standard narrative tells us Gen Z lacks drive. That they’re content to mooch off their parents, bury themselves in video games, and ghost adulthood. But zoom in closer and you’ll see the fingerprints of institutional rot all over their stalled lives. Since kindergarten, they’ve been gaslit by an education system more concerned with indoctrination than instruction. Forget merit—admissions and job pipelines are rigged in favor of identity quotas, not competence. Friedman warned what happens when you disconnect effort from reward: incentives die, and with them, initiative. A Market Rigged Against Its Own Future College used to be a vehicle for upward mobility. Now it’s a debt trap engineered…