The Future Won't Fix Itself
Opinion by Ben Everidge for Thomas
Photo Credit: Adobe Stock By Korea Saii
Ignored, Overburdened, and Underestimated: Why Gen Z and Millennials Must Organize as Independents
“If the future isn’t being built for you, build the movement that forces it.”
Washington likes to talk about young Americans. It rarely talks to them, and it certainly doesn’t listen. Gen Z and Millennials now make up the largest voting bloc in the United States. Yet, the political establishment behaves as if the country still revolves around retirees, donors, and corporate interests.
The result? A generation paying the price for political decisions they never supported, and paying it without meaningful representation.
And unless they organize – not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as Independents – their priorities will continue to be sidelined.
The Duopoly’s Betrayal of the Young
Both parties love the symbolism of youth. They love the Instagram photos, the college-tour speeches, the obligatory “future of America” rhetoric. But when it comes to actual policy making, Gen Z and Millennials are the afterthoughts of Washington.
They are:
The most educated generation in history
The most indebted
The most economically constrained
The most rent-burdened
The most climate-exposed
The most digitally surveilled
And the least represented
Worse: they are expected to smile through it, vote loyally, and “wait their turn” in a political system designed decades before they were born.
The duopoly has no incentive to change, because young voters have not yet demanded a price for being ignored.
The Two Parties, Not Fate, Created the Cost-of-Living Crisis
Housing? Out of reach.
Groceries? Up double digits.
Healthcare? The equivalent of a second rent payment.
Student loans? A lifetime drag.
Wages? Flat for 25 years.
Homeownership? Delayed by a decade or more.
And yet, the Democrats and Republicans spend more time fighting culture wars than fighting the affordability crisis strangling young adults.
Young adults aren’t “failing to launch.” They are being suffocated by policy choices made by people insulated from the consequences.
Neither Party Has a Serious Plan to Make Life Affordable Again
This is where any analysis is precise: affordability is not a mystery. It is solvable. Real solutions exist:
Aggressively expanding workforce housing supply
Targeting tariff reform to lower consumer prices
Investing in mobility infrastructure to break cost-of-living monopolies
Expanding access to free or near-free community college and trade schools
Federal incentives for first-time homebuyers
Encouraging public-private-philanthropic partnerships for childcare
Lowering healthcare administrative waste
Incentivizing local governments to increase zoning flexibility
Boosting wages through productivity-oriented investments, not political mandates
These solutions require imagination, competence, and courage.
Washington currently offers none of the above, as measured objectively.
Young Americans Are Treated as Voting Accessories, Not Decision-Makers
The duopoly’s campaign strategy is painfully simple:
In presidential elections: pander to young voters
In midterms: ignore them
In governing: serve older and wealthier constituencies who donate, lobby, and vote in every cycle
Young Americans are expected to vote out of fear. Fear of the other party, fear of losing rights, and fear of chaos.
Fear is the currency of the two-party system.
Hope belongs to the independents.
The Future Is Being Written Without Them
On every measure issue shaping the next 50 years, young Americans lack meaningful representation:
Climate resilience (their homes and safety at stake)
Entitlement reform (they will pay for today’s political cowardice)
AI and privacy (they live where the algorithms live)
Housing (half their income goes to rent)
Education and workforce training (they carry the debt, not Congress)
National security (Gen Z is the generation that will serve)
Economic policy (they entered adulthood during a recession, pandemic, and inflation spike)
Washington governs as if the 21st century can be managed with 20th-century political tools.
It can’t. And Gen Z and Millennials know this more than any generation.
The Only Way Forward: Organize Outside the Duopoly
Young Americans do not need permission to change the system, a system we all know is horribly broken.
But they do need unity, organization, and focus.
The moment they stop dividing themselves into red and blue camps and start organizing as independents, three things will happen immediately.
First: They Become the Deciding Vote in Every Election
Not a swing vote. Not a “youth surge.” The single most powerful bloc in the electorate.
Second: The Parties Will Have to Earn Their Support
When you cannot take young voters for granted, you must compete for them.
Third: Policy Begins to Change
Independents set the expectation that candidates must:
Address affordability
Support generational mobility
Govern competently
Act ethically
Reject extremism
And prioritize solutions, not slogans
This is how political power shifts, not through hope alone, but through organized independence.
The Thomas Take: The Future Won’t Fix Itself. But You Can Fix the Future
Gen Z and Millennials are the largest voting generation in American history, and the least willing to tolerate political nonsense. They value fairness, affordability, freedom, and integrity. But they will not get any of those things until they refuse to be treated as pawns in an aging political Civil War between the red and blue duopoly.
The American Dream is not dead. It is being mismanaged.
And the generation that grew up with recessions, mass shootings, climate shocks, crushing debt, and historic housing costs is the same generation that can resurrect American democracy, if they organize where the real power now lives: outside the two-party system.
This is your moment. Take it as a political independent.
Shape the future that Washington refuses to deliver.
