The New York Times informs me that ok boomer is the latest meme from disaffected members of Generation Z. You can probably guess what this is generally about, but read the whole piece if you want the details. Clearly, Gen Z has not yet taken my advice that we should all gang up against the Silent Generation instead of attacking each other.

In any case, here’s the basic gripe:

“Gen Z is going to be the first generation to have a lower quality of life than the generation before them,” said Joshua Citarella, 32, a researcher who studies online communities. Teenagers today find themselves, he said, with “three major crises all coming to a head at the Gen Z moment.”

“Essentials are more expensive than ever before, we pay 50 percent of our income to rent, no one has health insurance,” said Mr. Citarella.

One of the great things about living in a modern country is that there are actual statistics about these things collected regularly by the federal government. Let’s see what those statistics have to say about these three claims:

  • “Essentials” is a slippery concept, but with rent taken as a separate item I figure this means food, clothing, and transportation. Here’s how those things pencil out over the past few decades:
  • Rent is easier. According to the most recent edition of the Consumer Expenditure Index, the average income of those under 25 is $32,009 and their average rent is $6,349. That’s 20 percent.
  • The CDC tracks health insurance for those aged 19-25. In 2017, 85 percent of this age group was insured.

In other words, none of these claims is true. There is certainly a particular group of highly vocal Gen Z folks who insist on living in very expensive urban areas and are forced to pay 50 percent of their income in rent. But it’s a small segment, even if it’s a loud one.

“Essentials,” by contrast, are easier. They’ve done nothing but get cheaper over the years. And Obamacare has cut the uninsured share of young people in half.

I suppose the answer to all this is ok boomer. Fair enough. But the fact remains that Gen Z-ers just aren’t as bad off as they like to think they are.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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