I think we can declare generation bait articles off topic for HN as a category. Their signal/noise ratio, and especially the signal/noise of the resulting threads, falls off the bottom.
Gen X has been screwed too, just not quite as hard.
From all the reading I've done over the past decade or so, I've come to the conclusion that the thing that has been most damaging to younger generations has been real estate hyperinflation.
I don't think the term hyperinflation is that hyperbolic here... the run-up in real estate cost has been spectacular. Tuition and health care have also gone up but not as significantly as real estate.
I do think the "boomers" carry a substantial amount of the blame for this for supporting a whole raft of policies that have created artificial housing scarcity: restrictive zoning and NIMBYism, purely car-centric zoning, things like proposition 13 in California and similar bad policies in other states. I don't think it's malice per se. I think the boomers genuinely don't get it. When they were young housing was not so absurdly expensive, and the run-up in home values has been good for them. They don't see the problem because they're quite insulated from it.
The rest of the blame goes to the financial industry for marketing real estate as a financial instrument rather than a durable good (a place to live) as it should be.
Real-estate-as-speculation is the root cause. Everyone else just got caught up playing the game. Doesn't make those who participated blameless, but helps to identify the simplest way to repair some of the damage.
I think it's sort of a feedback loop. Restrictive housing policies kicked off housing inflation which transformed housing into a speculation vehicle and a financial instrument which in turn incentivized more zoning restriction.
