If you invested $1 in the S&P 500 in 1980, you'd have had $11-12 in 2000.
Even if you adjust for inflation, you'd still have had ~$6.
If you repeat this, investing $1 sometime in 2000, you'd be holding around $2.60 now, which is more like $1.60 after inflation is considered.
Income inequality often reduces to "did you have access to market returns from 1980-2000?"
I'm too young...but my parents aren't, and they paid my college tuition. So I received the benefit of a bull market that began before my birth.
The advice from boomers to live below your means and invest is still sound.
But it might be worth noting that the result of following that advice has been markedly different in recent history.
There hasn't been a 20-year period with comparable returns even if you happened to buy at the bottom of the great depression.
Millennials should acknowledge that boomers are not without wisdom.
Boomers should not that their comfortable lives are buoyed by luck and timing.