As a millennial, I will defend the "could not" in the sense that we were told lies that took too many years into adulthood to detect. Now that we recognize them as lies, we can reliably pass on reality instead of pissing in their ears and telling them it's raining.

Even to this day, my instinct is to pull up my bootstraps and try harder, since that's what I was programmed to do. It's all I know how to do. Maybe Gen Z has better programming and can form their identity around fairness instead of hard work that generally doesn't pay.

I think this is not quite true or fair. As millennials, it seemed like we were just about the only generation seeing through the bullshit and weren't benefiting largely from the system that the other gens were. We were alone, so of course we didn't make much progress. Now we have help from gen z (and hopefully gen alpha in a decade or so), and with our powers combined we are able to start to affect real change!

It's an exciting time. Millennials, don't discount yourselves. We walked (felt like limping much of the time) so our Gen Z brethren could help us all run.