François Bayrou had nothing left to lose. Days before the French National Assembly was set to pass a motion of no confidence in his government, the 74-year-old prime minister went on national television to pin the blame for France’s slew of seemingly intractable political and financial crises on an unlikely target: his own generation. Lamenting the Assembly’s moves to oust him after he unveiled a proposal to cut public spending and freeze annual pension increases to rein in his nation’s sprawling budget deficit, Bayrou argued that France’s political class was sacrificing the futures of young people “for the comfort of certain political parties and for the comfort of the boomers … who from [their] point of view consider that everything is fine.”
Bayrou’s blunt comments sparked an intense backlash, particularly among older French people; according to one survey, 84 percent of those over 50 rejected his characterization of France’s fiscal woes. But the same poll revealed a dramatic generational split: The majority of those under 35 agreed with Bayrou’s assessment. As observers in the media were quick to note, the generational fissure on Bayrou reflected a widening economic divide between France’s pension-drawing baby boomers, who saw median wages double during their peak working years, and struggling members of Gen Z (those born between roughly 1995 and 2012), for whom wages so far have been mostly flat. In France, the poverty rate among those aged 18 to 29 is 57 percent higher than among people aged over 65.
One 28-year-old Frenchman summarized the feeling held by many of his generation in a Reuters interview: “They paid off their mortgages faster than we can. They own property worth a fortune, have good health and big pensions. It’s unfair.”
In the United States, signs of a similar generational rupture are emerging. Gen Z Americans are frustrated about everything from sky-high housing prices (memes mocking greedy boomers sitting on overpriced homes and waiting to sell to a hedge fund offering top dollar have become a trend) to the out-of-control immigration rates that have radically altered our social and cultural fabric in just a few short decades. As a result, a Gen Z desperate for the prosperity, stability, and meaning that they view their grandparents’ generation as possessing has turned towards voices and ideas that were once excommunicated from the political mainstream.