I appreciate your attempt to address what you call the "elephant in the room" (in reference to financial challenges for young adults and even the not-so-young). However, is it not crucial to address the other elephant, the very one created by the room itself? You describe an economic reality, not the origin story of how we arrived here. This scenario where a good chunk of 30-year-olds still rely on their parents – how different is that from any other period in history? Are we measuring against some idealized Golden Era of American independence that never actually was? Our entire socioeconomic order hinges on a kind of protracted adolescence. Consumer culture thrives when the lines between child and adult are blurred. We want our MTV and want to pay the mortgage. We yearn for comfort yet berate those who lack the 'drive' to escape their reality. What’s often missing is an examination of that very reality we built. Consider the ways media molds not just habits but also aspirations. We don't merely exist in the world, we live through screens where pre-packaged 'adulting' ideals are hawked non-stop. We have built up a social arrangement where to be an independent young adult requires massive amounts of capital - or massive amounts of debt, which we're told to accept as normal. But is the student loan, the colossal rent, the always-online gig economy where stability is elusive – are these natural laws of human existence? Perhaps the issue isn't 'lazy millennials,' but the very stage upon which we've placed them to act out their lives. I say, before we accept a return to some idyllic pre-industrial past as our only solution, we might instead want to question the very rules of this play. How can we expect individuals to blossom into some self-sufficient ideal when the world around them thrives on the opposite? The call is not for blind rebellion, but rather a questioning, a 'genealogy of morals' of the entire edifice we call adult independence. As a species, let's critically examine what it means to be grown-up, not in dollars, but in autonomy of spirit, of thought. We owe this to ourselves – the examination, not the pre-packaged answers. The true adventure, the one worthy of a life lived, isn't in achieving some prescribed social milestone, but in defying the gravity of assumed truths. Then we will see which traditions to carry on, which to discard.