AOC Should Thank Baby Boomers for the World They Left Her

David Harsanyi on Jul 10, 2026

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she knows why socialism is on the rise: Blame it on the boomers.

"Millennials and Gen Z combined, now for the first time, are eclipsing the number of baby boomers," she explained recently. "Young people overall feel a tremendous amount of betrayal about the world we've been left."

It's inarguable that younger generations feel this way. The notion that millennials and Generation Z are toiling in a uniquely grueling economic era, however, is utterly delusional.

But convincing young people they've been handed a broken world only fostered an unprecedented sense of hopelessness. You are not victims of "oligarchs," unfettered capitalism or any other imaginary monsters.

One of the most popular myths these days (you hear it from both sides all the time) is that the American middle class is being gutted. It's simply not true. In 1980, 36% of American families were middle-class.

Only 31% of Americans are still in the middle class because the upper middle class has grown from 10% of households to over 30%. The middle class is shrinking because the upper middle class is expanding.

Real median income has not only grown across all classes over the past 40 years, but it has zoomed past the rest of the Western world. The average American family in Mississippi now has a higher per capita GDP than the average French, British and German family.

That's a pretty remarkable economic inheritance. Just ask the soccer fans visiting for the World Cup.

Another big grievance of younger people is that housing has become far too expensive. It's a genuine concern. But ownership rates are no lower today than they were in the '60s, '70s or 90s, and most of the 1980s. The homeownership rate in 1980 was 65.5%. In 2025, it was 65.4%. Rates temporarily spiked through the 2000s when government policy incentivized millions to "buy" houses they couldn't afford with no money down.

Housing shortages are driven by the laws of physics. It's not the boomers' fault that too many people want to live in and around major urban areas.

You also wonder if the average Gen Zer understands that the environment is infinitely cleaner today than it was 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

There has been widespread reforesting and wetland restoration. There is far less litter. Air quality is drastically cleaner, as is water. When boomers started driving, gas was leaded, and most cars didn't even have catalytic converters. Gen X grew up worried about things called "nuclear winter" and "acid rain."

An average household spends on clothing and food a fraction of what their grandparents did. And yet, they also have substantially more choices, including international and nutritious fare.

It's true that health care costs have risen. Some of it can be attributed to bad policy. Most of it reflects prosperity, as younger Americans will generally enjoy longer life expectancy and better care than any generation before them.

Big Pharma, one of the industries reviled by Ocasio-Cortez and her allies, keeps coming up with ways to keep people with once-deadly diseases alive. None of it is cheap. Yet.

Then again, we are generally safer. Vehicular deaths per 100,000 have been cut in half since 1980. Fire-related deaths and workplace fatalities have plummeted.

Last year, there were 305 murders in New York, one of the lowest annual homicide totals in the city's recorded history.

When Ocasio-Cortez first won her congressional seat, Time magazine writer Charlotte Alter wrote a glowing profile of the socialist newcomer, explaining that her "adulthood was defined by financial crisis, debt and climate change. No wonder she and her peers are moving left."

Since Ocasio-Cortez turned 18 in 2007, there have been only two negative growth years in the United States, one of them due to a worldwide pandemic. From 1970 to 2007, there was, on average, a negative or recessionary year every three to four years.

Americans worked through recessions in 1928, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980/1981, 1990 and 2001, without turning to socialism. The only thing special about Ocasio-Cortez's adulthood is that the recessions have become shorter and less severe. AOC is living in the golden age.

Boomers have failed on plenty of fronts, but being on the hook for a ridiculously expensive student loan on a useless degree isn't one of the great tragedies to have befallen mankind. It's just the consequence of choices. And most progressives want other people to pay for their choices.

There are plenty of serious problems -- there always are -- but historically speaking, by virtually every quantifiable measure available, Americans are living in a uniquely wealthy and safe world. Ocasio-Cortez should be thanking baby boomers for the world they left her.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books -- the most recent, "How To Kill a Republic," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.

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