Whoopi needs to understand that there are several systemic things that are different now than when she was younger:

• Health Care is prohibitively expensive, especially for major issues. If you don’t have a job with good insurance, and you have a major health emergency, that could ruin your finances for the duration. The good side to it is that we can treat a lot more things now; things that used to kill you are now survivable, even if it ruins your financial stability to do so.

• Education is similarly expensive. We told all these kids that going to college is the key to a good job, but everyone is doing it so at the end of it all they don’t really have any advantage over their peers, but end up in tons of debt before they even start.

• Casual Spending is much higher now, particularly as people work longer hours to pay off that medical and student loan debt. When Whoopi was young, going out to eat was a super-expensive treat. You got dressed up for it and everything. And you needed to go to the bank first and get cash to pay for it. Now “eating out” means grabbing a Taco Bell between shifts, because you dont have time to cook, and it all goes on the credit card to pay later (or not). It all adds up, but it not nearly as glamorous as she thinks.

• The cost of living in an area has a lot to do with it. The Software Engineer who can work remotely can move from the Bay Area to almost everywhere else in the country and net more money after local expenses. But that schoolteacher in Palo Alto can’t do their job remotely, and will never be able to buy a house there. They will need to rent until they retire, or move so far out they have to clog up the freeway for over an hour each way.

Nome of these things are the kids fault, and some of them are the current ownership class (from her generation) draining as much value out of young people as they can before they die off. We should start calling Boomers “The Vampire Generation”.