GenZ living its Parents' GenX life

In a new piece of commentary, which seems to somewhat masquarade as policy analysis and reporting, writer Alice Lassman informs us that Gen Z is Forcing Us to Rethink the American Dream | TIME

Lassman's online profiles describe her as a "policy expert with a focus on the global economy and gender." As a former high school teacher and writer who has done a fair bit of writing about Generation X, beginning with my master's thesis which analyzed work, life, and culture in the novels of Douglas Coupland, I key in on generational stories about Gen X and its offspring in Gen Z. And I often view writing about both with a fair amount of skepticism. For example, this line:

"America has never reckoned with a generation unwilling to blame themselves for the failure of its Dream. Gen Z might be the first to reject these goalposts, but they likely won’t be the last. This fracture should be alarming for a nation whose identity rests on the idea that even if you don’t make it, your children might—so long as you work hard."

I immediately took a double take on the idea that "America has never reckoned with a generation ..." For, the subsequent descriptors Lassman makes are the exact characterization made of Generation X in the 1990s. Like, a textbook reiteration of the exact same commentary made of the parents of Gen Z. 

Generation X was the "Nation at Risk," the first generation predicted and expected to have a lower standard of living than its parents. Gen X was the group that found and rejected its parents story of corporate loyalty and a respectable retirement, and the first that chose, and often had no choice but to choose, "lifestyle over career." The recession of the 1990s, the downsizing of factory populations, the off-shoring of jobs, the rise of contract or "gig work" that lacked benefits and security but was housed in the same companies that once employed Boomers and Silent Generationers for a lifetime, ... all these factors played a prime role in Xers quickly souring on and losing faith in the American Dream.

Heck, this was the first generation that grew up suspicious of societal institutions like government, education, and chuch, and it was a group who watched a president resign in disgrace as the US military withdraw from a decades long military quagmire. 

So, I have to say, I don't think Lassman is much of a policy expert and certainly not one who has done any significant research into her parents' generation, the parents of Gen Z.