LARRY KUDLOW: Why are Gen Z-ers so dour, depressed, and unemployed?

A new Sage economic study tears into Gen Z-ers and finds that they are dour, depressed, and lazy. Consumer sentiment for 18 to 34 year olds is at the lowest level in at least 50 years. The youngest among us are supposed to be the most optimistic, but today’s crowd is the most pessimist. Maybe it’s because they’re indoctrinated in school to hate Donald Trump and love woke socialism. Whatever the reason, this crowd is going nowhere fast. Especially the men.

The jobless rate for men ages 20 to 24 is 9.1%. This is a very lonely crowd. Women will not marry unemployed men. And by the way, unemployed men can’t buy homes. This doesn’t exactly explain all the so-called unaffordability crisis, but it may well explain a good chunk of it. Perhaps I’m wrong about this — but too many of the Gen Z crowd were camp followers of Joe Biden and all the far left socialists that have taken over the Democratic Party, including the woke culture, including the crazy Green New Deal nonsense, and generally sharing a hostile view of free market capitalism, which is the greatest engine of economic growth and affordability ever found. And meanwhile, as the lefty media and their Democratic allies keep whipping up this affordability hysteria, the fact of the matter is it was Joe Biden’s creation of unaffordability that led to Donald Trump’s smashing victory a year ago.

As JD Vance points out, home prices basically doubled during the Biden years. The illegal migrant crisis had a lot to do with it, where 15 or so million illegals came into the country and bid up rental and home purchase prices. No areas of the country were prepared for this. Then there’s the Biden regulatory obstacles that stopped developers from building new private housing.

The greenies don’t like private housing and use local zoning and permitting laws to stop it wherever possible.

And of course, at the heart of the affordability crisis, is the fact that Biden’s big government socialism spent so much money with massive record peacetime deficits that were monetized by the Fed's printing press, that they created a 9% peak inflation that cumulatively ran to over 20%. Nobody wanted to give up 3% COVID mortgages for Biden’s 7% or 8% rates. So don’t blame affordability on President Trump. 

So far, he’s gotten the inflation rate down to about 2.5%. Mortgages are closing in on 6%. Drill, baby, drill has now got 28 states with below $3 gasoline, actually averaging $2.80. Trump is right that the Walmart Thanksgiving meal is 25% cheaper this year. And with inflation declining and wage incomes rising by over 4%, working folks have recouped about a third of the Biden affordability loss. More to come, but a third.

Meanwhile, the President and his senior people need to fan out across the country and make this case, because if they don’t, all the Democrats wanto to do is sabotage the Trump boom any way they can.

Already there are signs of 4% economic growth, and a growthier economy is going to bring in higher incomes and more money in your pocket.

Next year, refunds for individuals could be as much as $200 billion, but the point has to be made. Trump's administration has got to explain to people what precisely is in the one, big, beautiful bill, and how it is going to affect them positively and solve the affordability crisis, and provide growth like you've never seen before.

There’s an economic boom out there. Gen Z-ers might think about diving into it for a change.