Every generation believes its investment boom is different. In the 1600s, it was tulips. In the 1990s, dot-com startups with no revenue. Today, it’s artificial intelligence

For an entire generation, making $100,000 a year was sold as the American benchmark for “you’ve made it.” It meant security. Comfort. Freedom. A good life.

We like to imagine ourselves as rational, calculated decision-makers—masters of our money, immune to impulse, grounded in logic.