Love your writing — thank you Justin. Please take comfort in a couple of undeniable facts:

1. the American consumer 1950–2015 is extinct. Covid took care of what was still alive and now we have a digital economy, shrinking paychecks, evaporated wealth, and a divided nation. Millennials are in excellent position to design and build the next America. What will you do with all the ghost malls we left you?
2. the union worker and the unskilled retail workers were your biggest foe — anti-millennial talk wasn’t coming from tech founders, hedge fund managers or real estate moguls, it was coming from disgruntled boomers who realized they had failed to score a touchdown in their lives, and it’s 4th quarter, 2 minute warning. Please ignore everything they said. They were not your role models. Now they’re extinct.
3. you are well positioned to ride a wave of tech-savvy new jobs that don’t yet exist but are just hatching as we reopen for a pandemic-hobbled attempt at business usual. You’re mentally elastic and physically strong enough to step into a new world where you’re learning as you go, while grumpy unemployed van drivers 20 years older than you will fail to adapt and catch the wave.
4. if anyone thinks they’re incomplete because they don’t own a jet ski and a truck to tow it, they are headed for the endangered list.