Is Gen Z Lazy?

By Caroline Downey

Friday, July 10, 2026

 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently faced backlash on X after she claimed that young people are flocking to socialism because of a collective sense of entitlement.

 

Asked by Fox  News anchor Jesse Watters about the trend of twentysomethings supporting so-called democratic socialism, Leavitt responded: “This generation — my generation, I hate to say it — Gen Z and those younger than me have been raised with silver spoons in their mouths and everything handed to them.”

 

“That is not the values this country was built on,” she added. “It was built on meritocracy and hard work, pulling up your sleeves, pulling yourself up from your bootstraps and achieving the American dream.”

 

Critics clapped back in the comments, alleging that Leavitt, herself a member of Gen Z, married into money and therefore couldn’t possibly understand the plight of struggling young Americans. Perceived economic insecurity is purportedly a big reason why young people are growing disillusioned with capitalism and fond of a system in which government attempts to equalize everything by taking from the rich. Leavitt’s remarks accurately recognized that many young people take for granted America’s material decadence that is foreign to much of the rest of the world and, as a result, believe that government should do more to support them.

 

This isn’t necessarily new.

 

Despite coming from a comfortable home led by a father who owned a vineyard, communist thinker Karl Marx was deeply resentful toward the economic success of his contemporaries, so he decided to develop an ideology that would prevent them from having it, mollifying his sense of inadequacy.

 

In a hilarious letter that made the rounds on X recently, Marx’s father wrote to his son,

 

Frankly speaking, my dear Karl, I do not like this modern word, which all weaklings use to cloak their feelings when they quarrel with the world because they do not possess, without labour or trouble, well-furnished palaces with vast sums of money and elegant carriages. This embitterment disgusts me and you are the last person from whom I would expect it. What grounds can you have for it? Has not everything smiled on you ever since your cradle? Has not nature endowed you with magnificent talents? Have not your parents lavished affection on you? Have you ever up to now been unable to satisfy your reasonable wishes? And have you not carried away in the most incomprehensible fashion the heart of a girl whom thousands envy you? Yet the first untoward event, the first disappointed wish, evokes embitterment! Is that strength? Is that a manly character?

 

This was the spirit of Leavitt’s comments, as many of the most fervent advocates of socialism these days are not working-class minorities but downwardly mobile elite college graduates who haven’t achieved what they thought they would by now. Yes, Gen Z has been saddled with some unique disadvantages in this economy. Most 18–29-year-olds right now likely won’t buy their first home until they’re in their late 30s due to high housing costs. Many took on obscene student loan debt for college degrees that were sold to them as essential credentials, though many of them hardly guarantee a job or job security long-term. Still, when you compare today’s challenges to those of our elders, Gen Z’s gripes seem overstated.

 

Like most things in life, the truth is less emotionally charged than viral X posts blasting retiree and billionaire avarice would suggest.

 

Social media silos have helped stoke the war between Zoomers and Boomers, with algorithms telling the youth that older generations are living lavishly at their expense. The internet depicts Baby Boomers watching their stock portfolios explode, and their paid-off homes appreciate at an exponential rate. Meanwhile, they send their offspring to fend for themselves in an expensive environment made worse by geopolitical turmoil, which to Gen Z is caused by more of the same interventionism that they will foot the bill for, either with boots on the ground or a ballooning national debt.

 

Gen Z believes the “system,” especially housing, has been rigged against them. They’re not entirely wrong — government meddling in mortgages and the Federal Reserve’s easy money era drove up housing demand without addressing supply. The welfare and entitlement state also disproportionately benefits older people.

 

But while endlessly decrying how they got the short end of the stick, members of Gen Z are reluctant to reflect on their own irresponsible lifestyle habits and unrealistic expectations. Yes, rising living costs partially account for young adults’ going into debt, but data also point to “doom spending” — using credit for lavish experiences, vacations, and trends driven by the philosophies of FOMO (fear of missing out) and YOLO (you only live once). Gen Z currently has the highest credit card delinquency rates of any generation, significantly outpacing older groups.

 

Some Gen Zers are consuming themselves into oblivion against a backdrop of nihilism largely manufactured by the internet. They can’t cover their last credit card statement, let alone a down payment on a house, keeping them locked in a vicious cycle of woe-is-me. And few mentors are stopping to say, “Hey, even considering the government abuses and stolen childhoods under Covid as well as the 2008 financial crisis that you watched your parents painfully navigate, it has been so much worse throughout American history.”

 

Affordability? It couldn’t get much more unaffordable than the 9.85 percent average year-over-year inflation under President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, which peaked at more than 14 percent in 1980. Given Zoomer discontent, though, it’s not surprising that so many are enthralled with populism and the latest seductive flavor, so-called Democratic Socialism, on the march in New York and other big cities.

 

To give the kids a break, what is missing from the “Gen Z is lazy” argument is that progressive policies have disenfranchised otherwise ambitious, hardworking young people, especially white men. For the last decade and into the post-woke era, a generation of young men were discriminated against in hiring and academic admissions because of the sins of those who lived a century ago. If corporations didn’t systematically exclude men with DEI quotas, the U.S. government forced them into competition with Indian and Chinese H-1B visa holders, a program that President Trump opposed in his first term but then backtracked on in his second. While the current administration has cracked down on low-skilled illegal immigration and therefore reduced that strain on our nation’s social services, its permissiveness toward importing foreign workers who are purported to be highly skilled but aren’t necessarily so is noticed by many Zoomer men, who once had great affinity for Trump. It is politically imprudent to indict all of Gen Z as petulant pity-partiers given that many young men rejected socialism in voting for Trump.

 

Gen Z is also entrepreneurial, as Leavitt noted, exploring alternatives to the 9–5 corporate career path by starting their own businesses, using new technology to work smarter, not harder, and pursuing careers in the trades.

 

It is true that many young people, especially in deep blue cities, have embraced economic myths that must be vigorously debunked. Tough love should be shown toward those who are young and therefore less wise. History is a good teacher, and Gen Z needs a good schooling on why Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, and Che Guevara were not in fact freedom fighters to be eulogized in classrooms but monsters whose experiments must never be repeated. Gen Z needs to be taught why the free market works both logically and morally and why top-down dictates that inhibit it, from rent control to high taxation, are wrong and doomed to produce terrible results.

 

Republicans would be wrong to treat all of Gen Z’s concerns with contempt in their understandable frustration with the youngsters’ newfound love for socialism. Some of their fears have merit; some don’t.