There are several problems to deal with: STRUCTURAL UNEMPLOYMENT. One of my beefs with my current school curricula is that one professor is preparing kids to be shift workers pressing buttons on machines. I can now buy a robot on Kickstarter for $7k to do that job - fuck Fanuc or Universal Robotics. Kickstarter. The other professor is teaching everyone the joys of handwork and sweatshop labor; I'm eschewing making chain because we aren't learning anything I can't buy a Fasti machine to do for $20k. Which doesn't mean I should buy a $20k Fasti machine. It means I should buy chain from someone who has one. These jobs are going away rapidly - 70% of them in the next ten years according to McKinsey. I know several guys in Hollywood who are hoping they'll still be working when their pensions kick in. The oldest one is about 5 years away and he's not gonna make it. But the kids? The millennials pining after the sweet sweet jobs the Olds have now? The Olds are going to take those to their graves. When my father-in-law retires in December, no one will advance to fill his position. It's too expensive. His position is retiring with him. COMPOUNDING INTEREST OR THE LACK THEREOF. Your "parents" took it in the ass in 2008. So did their pension plan. So did their 401(k). And all else being equal, X minus 20 percent is not going to compound as fast as X. So they'd love to retire but they can't afford to. Leave social security out of it; the average payout is $1372 a month. I remember when my boss' retirement took a ten-year hit in 2000 and guaranteed - it wasn't back where it needed to be by 2008. You're right - the Olds would love to sell their house to those pesky avocado-toast-eating whippersnappers for enough to retire to Boca in style. And you're right - the toast-eaters can't afford what the Olds paid for the dump back in '83. But look what you did here: Arithmetic is subject to neither threat nor hope. Global warming is gonna get solved because it better be. The solution, unfortunately, will be a peril-fraught and disorderly migration from the tropics. I have yet to see a solution to our balance sheet that provides happy outcomes for more than a select few. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. And the $1.4 trillion in debt will be paid off because it better be. Everyone's counting on it.