What happens when a generation is raised on economic promises that never materialize? Gen Z may want to ask their older siblings, the millennials, how that turned out, as the Great Recession of 2008—and the ensuing “jobless recovery”—left millions of altered lives, if not dashed dreams, in its wake. But as the oldest Gen Zers approach the 30-year-old benchmark, the economic habits of a generation who was born during a financial regime change are looking increasingly different from those of the generation that lived through it. The zoomers double as the so-called “doom spenders,” dishing out hundreds of dollars on concert tickets or international travel, entrenching the “YOLO economy” that emerged in 2021 amid the meme-stock craze. Gen Zers average $94,101 in personal debt, the highest of any generation and far more than millennials ($59,181) and Gen X ($53,255). This could be easily written off as the financial mismanagement of youth, but taken as a whole, Gen Z’s outlook on the economy is at once a rejection of conventional wisdom and a deep, almost subconscious absorption of the commodification of everything. Economist and author Alice Lassman, a (British) Gen Zer herself, has written for Business Insider about her personal disillusionment
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