Thirty years and 30 pounds ago, Workman published "Revenge of the Latchkey Kids," my bestselling entry in the Gen X manifesto genre. I argued in snotty prose and spiky scratchboard cartoons that Americans born in the 1960s and early 1970s faced a set of challenges that made us the first generation of the 20th century doomed to face downward mobility — to be worse off economically, and by extension politically and culturally, than our parents.

As the word "revenge" implies, it wouldn't be all bad. We'd be ignored by the Powers That Be — and we'd never become full-fledged members thereof — but we'd also be left alone; we would find our way.

Still, we were born under a dark star. Ours was the first postwar generation to enter a crappy job market hobbled by student loan debt and globalization. Lost, alienated and broke, we married later and had fewer kids and bought our first homes late or not at all. Whatever age we were at a given time was a bad time to be that age. Downsizing targeted us mercilessly in our 50s, and now, as we wade into our 60s, they want to take away our Social Security.

As tough as it's been for my cohort, though, the hand dealt to Generation Z — people born in the 2000s and early 2010s, who are entering the job market as young adults, is many factors worse.

Gen X arrived at the party after the boomers gobbled all the food and guzzled all the booze. But we were scrappy. We scavenged leftovers and half-finished drinks, bullied the DJ into playing some rad post-punk, and chatted up the stragglers as we collected the coolest stories no one from another generation would ever want to hear.

Gen Z won't even get to see that there was a party.

We took 17 years to pay off our "10-year" student loans, but it's hard to see how a Gen Zer with $160,000 in debt, at much higher interest rates than we paid, will ever earn enough to shake off their yoke. Politicians saddled us with $1 trillion in federal debt; Gen Z has $40 trillion. We could place hope in the 1990s economic expansion, the birth of the Web, the end of the Cold War, and relatively truthful print media. Gen Z came of age during the bizarro America of the COVID-19 pandemic, AI slop, fake bot ads for jobs on LinkedIn, Donald Trump and a dead Democrat Party. It's a deep-fake world where nothing is what it seems.

Gen X was subjected to stressors baby boomers couldn't begin to comprehend. Boomers ducked and covered throughout the Cold War and fretted about Vietnam draft numbers, but their home lives felt about as safe as one could in the nuclear family. Gen X watched their families disintegrate from divorce and dysfunction, forced to understand from an early age that they were on their own — neither their families nor their government could ever be counted upon to help.

Life has been tough on Gen X — and Z already has it worse. Gen Zers report much higher levels of anxiety, depression and other mental health afflictions. They are also far likelier to self-medicate with illegal drugs. Their internet-native childhoods have driven them insane.

I don't think Gen Z will have their "revenge" in the sense I had in mind in the mid-1990s. They're facing a set of challenges that look about as close to insurmountable as anyone could have imagined: the climate crisis and the probability that it will cause the collapse of human civilization by 2040 or 2050, late-stage capitalism, a moribund two-party electoral political system, an obsolete Constitution incapable of being amended, rising unemployment and poverty in a jobs market being revolutionized by AI. But Gen Z has something neither Silent Gens nor boomers nor Xers nor Millennials have: They're clearheaded.

An April 24 letter to the editor by Charles Huschle to The New York Times addressed the absence of younger voters at the anti-Trump "No Kings" marches we see every few months: "These protests are a huge waste of time. Their utility date is way past due. My generation knows more than you think. We know, for example, that if folks want to unseat the administration, then they need to march on weekdays, in Midtown Manhattan (not on family-friendly Saturdays) or encircle the White House and start camping out there.

"Every civil resistance movement goes through stages to be effective. The tactics of staging large demonstrations are worn out. People of my generation know it's time for the next stage. That's why we aren't out on the streets with our esteemed elders."

If the first step toward tackling a difficult future is acknowledging that there are problems, Gen Z is past that. The second step — refusing to engage with or waste time and energy on solutions that have been proven ineffective — is underway. For Gen Z, survival will be the best revenge.

For what it's worth, Gen X will be cheering you on.

Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the brand-new "What's Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems." He co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.

Photo credit: Jon Tyson at Unsplash