She's basically pitching UBI(Universal Basic Income), free healthcare and some sort of free housing.
My oldest child was born in 2000 and I talk to a lot of millennials that have a lot of the same fears as the author. First, they are right in that there are structural problems in the economy that is going to make things very difficult. The world has the same problems. It is hitting Japan and will collapse them. It will hit most of Europe and eventually North America. Meaning that millennials aren't as screwed as the generation 30-50 years from now so I guess that's a positive.
For the good news:
1) Everything in life except for housing, education and healthcare is cheaper now than its ever been. So if you can hack those 3 things you can get ahead. Share a house with 4 other people, study online or get scholarships, if you're healthy don't buy health insurance. There are ways around those inflated items.
2) Opportunity exist to go your own way that has never existed in all of human history. I have an etsy shop that made $8000 last year. I have a full time job so I don't do as much as I could but I could quit my job and make 100K+/year doing it. Go to etsy and see for yourself. There are many 1000s of people making a lot of money who started with a very low investment. I started with $1000. There are people on etsy making $100K+ making bath bombs. That's a $20 investment. etsy is one of dozens of ways to do this. This has NEVER existing. You can launch an online store with a free email account. That's amazing. 25 years ago it would cost $1000s to launch a simple store.
Don't want to do that? Fine. You can learn a thousand trades and skills on youtube or other free sources that will pay you 6 figures. You can learn things on youtube that a few years ago would cost 4 years of college.
Don't want to do that? Fine. Join the gig economy.
The opportunity to better yourself has NEVER been this exciting and cheap.
3) There is, at least with some, an entitlement attitude. I see it at school. Every car at my kids school is less than 3 years old, except my kids. All of their phones are at least iphone 6. These kids did not work and buy a new car and an iphone 8. Maybe its just the area I live in, but if you're 25 years old, there's nothing wrong with having a $30 android, living in an apartment and driving a car that is 20 years old. I know a lot of kids that find that thought repulsive and instead spend all of their money and some of their parents on their new car, new phone and nice rental house. That's a generalization but it applies at least where I live.
