By Futurist Thomas Frey
Harper James sat across from her mother at Thanksgiving 2034, and for the first time in years, they weren’t arguing about politics or money or whose generation had it worse.
They were planning which system to dismantle next.
Harper’s Gen Z cohort had already kneecapped the prison industrial complex with Ward the Warden. They’d begun the great banking exodus, routing around traditional finance entirely. They’d started rebuilding healthcare from scratch. Now her Gen X mother and Millennial brother were joining the fight—not as allies of convenience, but as co-conspirators who’d finally admitted they’d been screwed by the same con.
The American Dream, they agreed, had been the greatest rug pull in history. And they were done pretending otherwise.
The Promise That Became a Lie
The American Dream was supposed to rest on seven pillars: opportunity, freedom, upward mobility, homeownership, work ethic, equality of chance, and the pursuit of happiness.
Gen Z looked around and saw the rubble.
Opportunity? The ladder had been pulled up. Entry-level jobs required five years of experience. Internships were unpaid, accessible only to those with family wealth. The “level playing field” was a myth told by people born on third base.
Freedom? Economic freedom required capital they didn’t have. Personal freedom was constrained by debt that followed them for decades. Political freedom meant choosing between candidates who both served the same donor class.
Upward mobility? They were the first generation in American history expected to do worse than their parents. The escalator that lifted Boomers had reversed direction, and Gen Z was walking up the down escalator.
Homeownership? A cruel joke. Houses their grandparents bought on single blue-collar incomes now required two professional salaries and family wealth for a down payment—if you could even compete with investment firms buying everything for cash.
Work ethic? They worked harder than any generation before them—multiple gigs, side hustles, constant hustle—and still couldn’t afford what their grandparents got with a factory job and a pension.
Equality of chance? The starting line was determined by your parents’ zip code, their wealth, their connections. Meritocracy was a fairy tale the winners told themselves.
Pursuit of happiness? Buried under student loans, medical debt, and the knowledge that retirement was a fantasy and climate disaster was inevitable.
The Dream hadn’t faded. It had been systematically dismantled and sold for parts.
The Intergenerational Alliance
What changed everything was when Gen X and Millennials stopped defending the system and admitted they’d been conned too.
Gen X watched their own children face the same impossible economics. They’d believed the bootstrap mythology, worked the corporate jobs, played by the rules—and still got downsized, outsourced, and left without pensions. Their 401(k)s evaporated in crashes while executives got golden parachutes.
Millennials had tried to reform from within. They’d been patient, earnest, believing that if they just worked hard enough, educated themselves enough, the system would eventually deliver. It didn’t. They got crushed by student debt, locked out of homeownership, burned out by gig economy exploitation, and gaslit by Boomers who told them avocado toast was the problem.
By 2030, three generations—representing nearly 70% of the population—had reached the same conclusion: the system wasn’t broken. It was working exactly as designed, and they were the ones being exploited.
The alliance was inevitable. Gen Z brought the rage and the technical skills. Millennials brought the institutional knowledge and the organizational capacity. Gen X brought the “whatever, let’s burn it down” energy that comes from watching empty promises for fifty years.
Together, they became unstoppable.
The Systems in Their Crosshairs
The prison system fell first—replaced by Ward the Warden and actual rehabilitation. The financial system was hemorrhaging as millions abandoned traditional banks. Healthcare was being rebuilt from scratch.
But those were just the opening moves.
Education was next. Why pay $200,000 for a degree when AI tutors, peer learning networks, and skills-based credentialing could deliver better results for free? Universities watched enrollment crater as three generations simultaneously rejected the debt-for-diploma model.
The entire credentialing system followed. Why should employers care about degrees from institutions designed to gatekeep opportunity? Gen Z and their allies built reputation systems based on actual competence, peer validation, and demonstrated skills. Traditional credentials became as relevant as a medieval guild membership.
Housing came under assault. If homeownership was blocked by investor-owned properties, Gen Z formed housing cooperatives, co-buying collectives, and community land trusts that removed housing from speculative markets entirely. By 2035, over three million Americans lived in permanently affordable housing owned by resident cooperatives rather than landlords or banks.
The corporate employment model crumbled. Why accept exploitative wages and no benefits when worker-owned cooperatives shared profits democratically? The gig economy platforms that extracted value were replaced by platform cooperatives that distributed it. Traditional corporations found themselves unable to hire as workers defected to democratic alternatives.
Even democracy itself got disrupted. Tired of choosing between corporate-funded candidates, three generations built participatory budgeting platforms, liquid democracy voting systems, and direct representation tools that routed around captured political institutions.
The Working Class Joins the Fight
The disenfranchised working class—people across racial, geographic, and political lines who’d been abandoned by both parties—saw what was happening and recognized their own grievances in the generational revolt.
They’d been told to pull themselves up by bootstraps while their factories closed and their towns died. They’d been promised that loyalty to employers would be rewarded while watching pensions vanish and wages stagnate. They’d been sold the American Dream while watching it get shipped overseas or automated away.
When Gen Z offered alternatives—worker cooperatives, community-owned platforms, mutual aid networks, democratic governance—the working class didn’t ask about ideology. They asked: “Does it work better than what we have?”
The answer was yes. Consistently, measurably, undeniably yes.
Rural factory towns formed worker-owned cooperatives. Rust Belt cities built municipal broadband and local digital infrastructure. Communities that had been written off by coastal elites became laboratories for post-capitalist alternatives.
The political establishment tried to divide them—urban versus rural, young versus old, educated versus working class. But when you’re all getting screwed by the same system, those divisions stop mattering.
The Great Unraveling Accelerates
By 2036, the collapse wasn’t theoretical anymore. It was statistical.
Traditional bank deposits among under-50s: down 60%. University enrollment: down 40%. Corporate employment among Gen Z: down 55%. Participation in traditional electoral politics: historic lows. Trust in major institutions: single digits.
The systems hadn’t been stormed or overthrown. They’d been abandoned. Made irrelevant. Routed around.
And in their place, something new was emerging—decentralized, democratic, designed by the people who actually had to live with the consequences.
Final Thoughts
The Boomers called it entitlement. Gen X called it naive. Mainstream economists called it impossible.
But three generations, joined by a working class that had nothing left to lose, weren’t asking permission anymore.
They’d been sold a Dream and delivered a con. Promised opportunity and given exploitation. Told to be patient while the planet burned and their futures were sold for quarterly earnings.
So they stopped participating in systems designed to extract from them. They stopped believing in institutions that had failed them. They stopped waiting for permission to build something better.
The American Dream didn’t die. It was murdered by the generation that benefited from it most, then sold the corpse to the highest bidder.
What comes next won’t be the Dream restored. It’ll be something entirely different—built by people who learned the hard way that if you want something done right, you can’t trust the people who profited from doing it wrong.
The great unraveling isn’t coming. It’s here. And it’s accelerating.
The only question left is whether the old guard will adapt or simply become archaeological curiosities—relics of a system that promised everything and delivered nothing to everyone who came after.
Related Stories:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-decline-of-the-american-dream-and-what-to-do-about-it/
