"The Double Debt Mountain of 2026"
by John Wilder
"The economy looks “fine” on the surface. Fine, that is, if you believe the headlines. I sense, though, underneath it’s a double debt mountain that’s getting closer to a landslide every day, and someone is planting bombs along the slope. Okay, that’s a lot of metaphor. Let me see if I can pilot this ship home.
Damn. Another metaphor. One bomb is the wallets of the kids. The other bomb is in Washington.
Both are set to blow up the same people: Millennials and Gen Z, generations already hammered by housing costs, stagnant real wages, hordes of legal and illegal aliens soaking up employment, and women who forgot that the main reason they exist is to make more humans.
Good news? Yeah, there’s a tiny sliver. Credit card delinquencies on some non-housing debt leveled out in late 2025 according to the New York Fed®. But that’s like saying the fire department showed up and has the fire down to burning one house an hour in the neighborhood. The real picture is as ugly as an Antifa swimsuit pageant. Yeah, it’s grim. And all of their older women are coming down with prostate cancer.
Credit cards have become the new paycheck for millions of young Americans, and new companies have shown up to monetize even the smallest debts. Want to go to Taco Bell™ and pay for that Super Crunchwrap Supreme Bellgrande™ over the next six months? You can do that.
Total credit card debt hit a record $1.28 trillion in 2025, up $44 billion in just three months. That’s not a blip: that’s paying for groceries on credit cards and only paying the minimum monthly payment. Delinquencies on household debt overall jumped to 4.8 percent, led by the kids. For people under 39, the transition into serious delinquency on credit cards is nearly double the national average.
Surveys show 56 percent of Gen Z are forced to use cards just to make ends meet because prices keep climbing. Sixty-six percent of Millennials say they rely on plastic to get through the month. Thirty-five percent of Millennials are carrying more than $10,000 in card debt. Credit card debt, the gateway drug of insolvency. Sure, payday lenders and “buy here, pay here” car places are the crack cocaine and meth of debt, but it all starts somewhere. Gen Z is running around $3,500 in average balances, while Millennials are pushing $7,000. They’re not buying yachts or avocado toast, they’re financing groceries, gas, and rent.
Here’s why this mess is worse than it looks: First, real wages aren’t keeping up, and the system is rigged against the young. Gen Z and Millennials entered the workforce during the pandemic hangover, got crushed by housing prices we already talked about, and now face interest rates that make every purchase a long-term loan. The GloboLeftElite told them to “follow your passion” and rack up student debt for useless degrees that qualify them for entry-level retail jobs in malls that don’t exist anymore. And they listened.
Credit cards fill the gap at 20-25 percent interest. For those that didn’t choose wisely and avoid jobs taken by Jugdish, life is not luxury. It’s debt, roommates, and used couches that smell vaguely of fish. Forever. One bad month due to a mandatory car repair, unexpected medical bill, or if Egyptians convince them to invest in a pyramid scheme, and they’re in the hole they can’t climb out of.
Second, banks and card companies love debt. People don’t get poor because they don’t make enough money, they get poor because they give it away to everyone else: ask the Amish. Banks are making fat margins on revolving debt while pretending everything is peachy. Delinquency rates are rising, but not fast enough for the suits to panic yet. They know the game: extend and pretend and as long as we get this quarter’s bonus, it’s all copacetic. Just like with the housing market in 2008.
Meanwhile, the official unemployment rate looks fine because more paper-pushers are getting hired in the last growth industry: government jobs. The real economy? Productive private-sector work is stagnant. Young people are borrowing to eat.
Third, this consumer debt bomb feeds right into the bigger federal debt bomb. Washington has its own plastic problem, except it’s measured in trillions. National debt sits north of $38.5 trillion. Net interest payments are projected to hit $1 trillion in fiscal year 2026 and interest payments are already bigger than defense spending in the first quarter of this year.
Interest already eats 19% of all federal revenue. By 2036, CBO says it doubles to $2.1 trillion and consumes nearly a quarter of everything the government takes in, but the CBO is always low, because they have to use the assumptions that Congress made up. Yes. AOC is responsible for the rules of the game. But what do we want to spend our money on? Defense? Medicare? Infrastructure? Sorry, the interest check has to clear first.
Fourth, the GloboLeftElite solution is always the same: print more, borrow more, kick the can. National debt doubles every eight years. The Fed and Congress act like debt is free because they control the printer and don’t have to worry. Higher debt, though, means higher interest rates, which means even more debt service, which means . . . you get it. It’s a doom loop.
Every time they “stimulate” to keep the economy looking good for the next election, they make the next crisis worse. And who pays? Not the politicians. Not the connected class in D.C. It’s the taxpayers, especially the young ones who haven’t built wealth yet, but yet were forced to watch the abomination that is Scrappy Doo™.
Fifth, the generational theft is obvious. Boomers got cheap debt, rising home values, and that long summer of the 1980s and 1990s. Oh, and pensions that actually worked. Millennials and Gen Z get 24 percent credit card APRs, $1 trillion in federal interest payments crowding out future programs, and a promise that “we’ll import more workers” to fix the birth rate collapse caused by imported workers, interest payments, and... Female empowerment.
Female hypergamy and economic despair already delayed families, and they’ve reached civilization-ending levels with Gen Z and Millennial female solipsism. Now add maxed-out cards and a government that can’t even pay its own interest without borrowing more. The kids who should be having kids are busy paying Visa® instead.
The result? Gen Z and Millennials fall even further behind. They delay marriage, delay kids, delay life. Birth rates keep dropping. The GloboLeftElite flips from “stop having babies, save the planet!” to “import babies, we’re not having enough!” in one generation because their policies broke the math. Young couples look at the spreadsheet listing rent, cards, future taxes for Boomer pensions and federal interest and decide “maybe later.” Or never.
But me? Debt mountains? Debt landslides? I think I need to stop with my metaphors because they’re making me sneeze. Metaphors really set off my analogies."
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