A Generation Raised on Big Promises

Here's a simple pattern to notice. Many rich countries, including much of Western Europe, have had slow economic growth for the last twenty years. At the same time, populations are getting older, and both governments and regular people owe more and more debt.

During all of this, leaders in politics and business keep saying the same thing: the next new technology crypto, the metaverse, AI, quantum computers, or whatever comes next will finally fix everything and bring growth back.

Gen Z grew up completely online. They see more ads, more hype, and more tech promises than any generation before them. But they also face the worst numbers in decades when it comes to wages compared to housing costs, and job security.

This is a real problem, and serious economists agree it's worth talking about. Many have written about "growth without real gains" meaning the economy grows on paper, but people don't actually feel richer. Much of this growth is built on debt, not real income increases. And it's politically convenient for leaders to point to a shiny new technology instead of fixing harder problems, like not building enough houses or paying people fairly.

But here's where some people go too far: saying this is one secret, planned conspiracy. It's more accurate to say the incentives just happen to line up. Politicians get to tell a hopeful growth story without raising taxes or upsetting powerful groups. Companies get an exciting story for their stock price without having to prove their product actually makes money yet. Nobody needs a secret meeting for this to happen it just happens naturally when everyone wants the same easy story.

Why "New Technology" Makes Such Good Marketing

This part isn't a conspiracy theory it's basic business, and it's well documented.

A well-known model called the "hype cycle" has tracked this same pattern for over 25 years. It works like this:

A new technology appears.

People get excited, and expectations shoot up fast faster than the technology can actually deliver.

Excitement peaks (called the "peak of inflated expectations").

People realize it wasn't as amazing as promised, and interest crashes (called the "trough of disappointment").

Only years later does the technology find a realistic, useful place in everyday life.

The metaverse (2021-2023) followed this exact pattern. A lot of today's "AI-powered" marketing is doing the same thing right now companies slap the word "AI" onto an old product, show it off at a big event, and watch their stock price go up, even when the product hasn't really changed much.

Why does this trick keep working? Three simple reasons:

Investors don't have unlimited attention. Saying "we're doing the trendy new thing" is much cheaper than actually building something new.

Gen Z is glued to their phones and shares things fast. This means tech announcements spread quickly and for free the audience does the advertising work without being paid.

Nobody checks back later. By the time people notice a "revolutionary" feature didn't really work as promised often a year or two later the news has moved on, and so has everyone's attention.

None of this means every company doing this is lying. Some of the technology really is useful. But the marketing around it is often disconnected from what the product actually does. That gap is where the criticism is fair.

Elon Musk Separating Facts From Exaggeration

Being fair means checking the real numbers, not just repeating a story we already believe. Here is what has been confirmed, and what has not.

Musk spent about $270 million supporting Donald Trump's 2024 election campaign. This included $238 million to a group called America PAC, and another $20 million to a separate group meant to soften Trump's position on abortion. This made Musk the single biggest political donor in the country that year.

After the election, Musk took a top advisory role in the new administration, in a project called DOGE. This has raised real concerns about conflicts of interest, since his companies hold more than $19 billion in active contracts with the U.S. government including NASA, the Pentagon, and intelligence agencies.

His companies SpaceX and Starlink really are deeply connected to U.S. national security. The military version of Starlink, called Starshield, holds about $1 billion in contracts with the Space Force and related agencies. In 2021, SpaceX also signed a secret $1.8 billion contract with the National Reconnaissance Office to launch an encrypted government satellite network. Experts have pointed out that this makes the U.S. military uncomfortably dependent on just one company for important space operations.

In June 2026, Musk became the world's first trillionaire after SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange, valued at close to $1.77 trillion. Since then, his personal fortune has swung wildly briefly passing $1.4 trillion, then dropping below $1 trillion, then rising again. That's mostly because most of his wealth is tied up in SpaceX stock that he can't easily sell, not cash sitting in a bank account.