Gen X Got Robbed (And They Don't Know It)
From a former free lunch kid
We thought declining schools and impossible college costs were normal. They weren't.
Here's something that will blow your mind: Generation X is the first generation in American history to receive less from our government than our parents did. Not just less money, but less of everything. Less infrastructure investment, less educational funding, fewer social supports, and systematically diminished opportunities.
And here's the kicker: most of us never even noticed because we thought what we got was normal. I'm here to tell you it wasn't normal. Our parents and grandparents built something extraordinary in post-war America, quietly dismantled just as we came of age. We grew up thinking that crumbling schools, impossible college costs, and bare-bones social services were just "how America worked."
Spoiler alert: They weren't. We got robbed, and most of us didn't even realize it was happening.
Let me paint you a picture of what the Greatest Generation built for their kids. This isn't nostalgia or rose-colored glasses. This is documented, verifiable, holy-crap-I-had-no-idea reality. In 1960, federal infrastructure spending was 5% of GDP. The Interstate Highway System wasn't just built in the 1950s and 60s; it was called "the greatest public works project in history." State and local governments were investing 3.8% of GDP in capital projects by 1975. They were building roads, bridges, water systems, and public facilities as if they were constructing the future because they were.
Here's where it gets personal for those of us who sat in underfunded classrooms. Local education spending peaked at 3.6% of GDP in 1971. Federal education spending hit its highest point at 1.2% of GDP in 1979, right before we started elementary school. The Greatest Generation understood education was economic development, so they funded schools accordingly. In 1970, Baby Boomers could pay for college with part-time minimum-wage work. They spent an inflation-adjusted average of $3,519 for public college tuition. A year at Harvard in 1947 cost 17.5% of the median household income. Expensive? Sure. Impossible? Not even close to what we have now.
The post-war era created Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and robust unemployment insurance. These weren't charity programs. They were the infrastructure of middle-class security. Our parents grew up in an America that was systematically investing in success. We grew up in the aftermath of that investment being stripped away.
The Data Tells the Story
INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING AS % OF GDP
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1960: Federal Infrastructure 5.0%
1975: State/Local Capital 3.8% ← Peak investment
1995: Federal Infrastructure 2.5% ← Cut in half
EDUCATION FUNDING DECLINE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Local Education (% of GDP)
1971: 3.6% ← Peak
1984: 3.1% ← Gen X in elementary school
Federal Education (% of GDP)
1979: 1.2% ← Peak
1990s: 0.7% ← Cut by 40%
COLLEGE COST EXPLOSION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Baby Boomers (1970s): $3,519 average tuition
Generation X (2023): $9,750 average tuition
Increase: 177%
Work Hours Needed for College:
1970: 15 hours/week + summer job = private college tuition
2021: 100 hours/week year-round = private college tuition
THE TIMELINE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1965-1975: Gen X born during peak public investment
1979-1984: Investment cuts begin as the oldest Gen X starts school
1980s: "Most extreme decade" for college cost inflation (9.16% annually)
1981-1982: Reagan cuts eliminate programs for 1M+ children
So what happened? Simple: just as Generation X entered elementary school in the late 1970s and early 1980s, America's leaders decided that all this public investment was too expensive. They started dismantling it piece by piece, and we were the first generation to experience the consequences.
By the mid-1990s, federal infrastructure spending had fallen to just 2.5% of GDP, half of what it was in 1960. The Treasury Department reports state and local capital investment "fell sharply in the 1970s and early 1980s before stagnating and drifting downwards." Translation: The excellent infrastructure our parents built in the 1950s and 60s started falling apart just as investment to maintain it disappeared. We grew up with pothole-filled roads and crumbling bridges, thinking this was standard American infrastructure. It wasn't.
The education cuts were brutal and precisely timed to screw over Generation X. Local education spending dropped from 3.6% of GDP in 1971 to 3.1% by 1984, right when the oldest of us were in elementary school. Federal education spending plummeted from 1.2% of GDP in 1979 to just 0.6-0.7% throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The Economic Policy Institute documented that regular education's share of school spending declined from 80% in 1967 to 59% in 1991. We attended systematically underfunded schools compared to what Boomers had received just a decade earlier.
This is where the theft gets personal. The 1980s saw the "most extreme decade for tuition inflation" at 9.16% annually, when Generation X reached college age. By 2023, public college tuition had increased by 177% compared to what Baby Boomers paid. Here's the math that should make you furious: In 1970, students could work through college with part-time minimum-wage jobs. By 2021, students would need to work 100 hours per week year-round to afford private college tuition. Between 1980 and 2023, college costs rose 155% while wages for young workers increased only 19%.
Generation X faced an impossible choice: take on massive debt or skip college entirely. Many chose debt, becoming the first generation to normalize borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for an education that their parents had paid for mainly with summer jobs.
The 1981-1982 budget cuts hit families with children like a sledgehammer. The budget cuts "reduced or eliminated many means-tested programs," including welfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and housing assistance. The immediate damage was staggering: one million children lost reduced-price school lunches, 600,000 people lost Medicaid, and one million lost food stamps. Working families saw their benefits cut by an average of $64 per month, and 15% "gave up their houses and moved in with their parents." Sound like a repeat of what we hear on today’s news?
Generation X grew up after these cuts, experiencing a thinner social safety net than any generation since the Depression. Here's what makes me want to shake every Gen Xer by the shoulders: We didn't fight these changes because we thought they were normal. We had no memory of robust public investment, so we came of age thinking that crumbling infrastructure was just how America worked, taking on crushing student debt was a natural rite of passage, minimal social supports were rugged individualism, and declining public services were inevitable. We normalized scarcity because we didn't know abundance was possible. Our parents remembered when things were different, but for us, diminished public investment was "the American way."
The economic data shows exactly what this dismantling has cost us. America entered a slower-growth trajectory just as Generation X entered the workforce. We weren't just facing individual challenges. We were navigating a systematically less dynamic economy than our parents had inherited.
Understanding this history changes everything about Generation X's experience. We weren't facing everyday economic challenges. We were navigating the aftermath of a massive policy shift away from public investment. The financial struggles that defined our coming-of-age weren't personal failings or inevitable market forces. They were the predictable consequences of dismantling the systems that had created the American middle class. The saddest part isn't just what we lost, but that we never knew we'd lost it. We spent decades believing that struggling to afford college, dealing with crumbling infrastructure, and having minimal social supports were natural features of American life.
But here's the good news: once you understand what happened, you can do something about it. Some states and communities are already rebuilding what was lost. Infrastructure investment is slowly recovering from historic lows. Some states are restoring education funding and making college affordable again.
For Generation X: Start by understanding that your struggles weren't personal failings. You were navigating a fundamentally different America than your parents inherited. Share this history with other Gen Xers who might still think decline is normal.
For Future Generations: Learn from our experience. When politicians try to cut education funding, slash infrastructure investment, or gut social programs, remember what happened to us. Robust public investment isn't a luxury. It's the foundation of opportunity.
For Everyone: Support candidates and policies that rebuild public investment. Vote for school bonds. Advocate for infrastructure spending. Understand that the private market alone cannot maintain the public goods that make prosperity possible.
The Greatest Generation's legacy wasn't just winning a war. It was building a country that invested in its people's success. Generation X inherited the beginning of that legacy's dismantling, but we don't have to pass that legacy on. The question isn't whether America can afford to invest in infrastructure, education, and social supports. The question is whether we can afford not to, especially now that we know what decline looks like.
We were the first to lose what the Greatest Generation built, but we don't have to be the last to remember what America can achieve when it chooses to invest in success rather than scarcity. Your move, Gen X. Time to stop normalizing theft. This understanding becomes even more critical in 2025, as a new generation of policymakers debates whether to continue rebuilding public investment or return to the failed policies that robbed Generation X of their inheritance.