"Well, first of all, this is going to make a lot of Gen Z or Zoomers very unhappy, but there's no generation alive now that they are more like than the baby boomers. They are the absolute mirror images of the baby boomers, a generation which thinks it's the first post-American generation, more secular than any other generations, have discarded all that racist clap trap that all the other generations had and is facing a new world and a new way, post-American generation. Congratulations to you all. Sometimes we want to pinch their little cheeks, it's so cute, but we wisely don't because they like... Our slogan when we were that age was, "Don't trust anybody over 30." A large generation which comes in a period of prosperity and then has to go out and make its living in a more difficult time, generally speaking, has a chip on its shoulder. But look, to get to reality here, these days you've got two phenomena happening at once. Number one is the cultural difference between generations or the technological differences growing. Somebody in Gen Z grew up in a world that I only encountered at 50 and cell phones, social media, all of this stuff, algorithms that are created by super geniuses with the sole purpose of rotting your brain, all of those things are natural parts of the environment to them. They're kind of afterthoughts in a way to people that are older. So your idea of the world that you live in and what that world needs, what the big problems are is more different from older generations than in stabler technological times. But at the same time, in part thanks to the same technology, advances in medical care and so on, the old folks are hanging on longer than ever. So we've never had a political class as old as this with so many people in their 70s and 80s. Business too, by the way. So the gap between the 70-somethings and the 80-somethings that are running the show and the instincts and the priorities of people that are in their 20s and 30s and don't see when, if ever, they're going to get a shot are very tough. And by the way, youth is impatient and old age tends to be greedy, so it's an ugly mix. Then I think you can throw into this another element of demographic change, which is more felt in some countries than others, but in a place like France, it's very real, the population is stagnant or shrinking, which means that the younger generation is numerically a smaller proportion of the population. And so it's going to have a harder time taking power in politics. It's going to be a smaller vote. Young people don't vote as often necessarily as older people do anyway, but on top of that, the numbers are smaller. And also as consumers, if you're a smaller share of the consumer market, the sort of economic and business world adjusts to your preferences more slowly than if the American baby boomers, you're this maximum generation. People talked about the pig and the python as the baby boomers. So the world is less responsive to these younger generations that are numerically smaller, but politically alienated and economically AI, rising geopolitical tension to a generation that's been taught to value safe spaces. And let's do jazz clap because we don't want anybody to be upset. All right, "Now Trump is president. There's war in Russia, there's war in the Middle East. Xi Jinping might take Taiwan, there's inflation. Where's the safe space?" The answer is there is no safe space anywhere. And so you have a generation that is naturally and appropriately concerned about the future and doesn't have a lot of faith in the old people who seem to have gotten us into this mess. By the way, except for your extremely wise and cogent global view correspondent who sees it all and has infinite compassion for you young people." ~ @wrmead on Gen Zs A Trump, Xi and Putin Summit? - Opinion: Potomac Watch wsj.com/podcasts/opinion-pot…