I feel for the young people who invested into their futures and got rug-pulled. I feel for the teenagers looking forward who wonder if there will be any career paths left to pursue. Most of them will be OK. If they aren't, none of us will be OK because it means society will have collapsed. A society which fails to provide reasonably achievable paths for young people who do all the right things is NGMI.

The ones I really worry about are the mid-career workers. They aren't far enough along to make it until retirement. They have mortgages and families. I'd like to think a lot of them pivot and find new paths. But it's a lot easier to say that than to do it. A hard forced pivot in your 40s or 50s under financial pressure is brutal. Some will be lucky and some will have that ultra-grit to make it through. A lot of good normal people who were doing the right things aren't.