middleclassparty

Older generations say “we all struggled in our 20s.” No, you didn’t. You didn’t pay $2,200 for rent and $7 for eggs. You didn’t graduate into $50K student debt and $0 job security. Gen Z isn’t dramatic. They’re drowning.

On any given night more than 33,000 veterans are experiencing homelessness across the country. 60% of homeless veterans do not receive all the VA benefits they are entitled to. Older veterans on fixed social security incomes are now the fastest growing demographic of homeless veterans. Tonight while politicians give Memorial Day speeches 33,000 veterans will sleep outside. That is not a tragedy. That is a choice this country keeps making. Time to make a better choice.

More than 460,000 veterans spend over half their income on rent. About a third of veterans who served after 2001 pay more than 30% of their income on housing. Rising food prices make it harder for military families including veterans to afford nutritious meals. They survived combat. They shouldn't have to struggle in this economy.

We send them to war. We bring them home to $7 milk and $800 car payments. We cut the VA that keeps them alive. We build a $400 million ballroom. This is not honoring veterans. This is using them.

The people who built this country's freedom are living inside its collapse. Veterans are facing the same broken job market as everyone else. The same unaffordable housing. The same medical system that sends $108,000 bills for 20 minute surgeries. The same grocery stores where $73 barely fills a bag. The same gas prices up 52% in three months. Except they came home from war to face all of it. Honor the fallen today. Then get angry enough to change what they came home to.

Today we thank veterans for their service. Here is what that service gets you in America in 2026. Thousands of VA doctors and nurses were fired this year. A nurse and a manufacturing tech who both served cannot afford rent together. We fire million dollar missiles to shoot down $20,000 drones in the Middle East. We write blank checks to the military industrial complex. And we can't house the people who came home. You want to support our veterans? Stop voting for the people doing this to them.

How did we get here? It started with trickle down economics that never trickled. Then stock buybacks were legalized so executives got bonuses instead of workers getting raises. Then pensions were replaced with 401ks nobody knew how to use. Then jobs were shipped overseas. Then predatory lending crashed the housing market in 2008. Then taxpayers bailed out the banks. Then the banks and wealthy bought all the foreclosed homes at the bottom. That is when rent started climbing. Then we had the big print during Covid...which continues. Every single step was a policy decision. The middle class did not die of natural causes. It was dismantled piece by piece over 45 years.

“Just move somewhere cheaper” is horrible advice. Cheaper doesn’t exist. Everywhere “affordable” is already full of people who fled somewhere else. You’re not bad with money. America is bad at letting you live.

America is about to have its first trillionaire. The average American makes $66,000 a year. One in four lives paycheck to paycheck. It costs $159,000 a year just to live comfortably. That's not a gap. That's a canyon.

In 1929 a home cost three times the average worker's wage. Today a home costs eight times the average worker's wage. In 1929 that ratio triggered the Great Depression. Today we call it a healthy real estate market. The wage did not move. The goalposts did.

We are in a depression right now. The only reason it's not called that is because the wealthy have never been richer. They are doing fantastic. But for the working class it is exactly what a depression feels like. The definition of a depression did not change. The people writing the definition did.