Your perspective is one that I share, on the nature of class-based economics in a 'consumer' society such as the modern United States. I'm going to copy/paste a summary that I sent to a former co-worker (CFA Level 3, >$6B AUM) for his thoughts and he felt I did an okay job (made me feel smart).

So demographically, older workers have not saved enough for retirement. That drives them to maintain employment. With a lack of job opportunities (the slack), the youngest generations are presented a significant challenge – with amongst the highest debt levels and least job prospects, the youth cohort entering its first (or prime) earning years can be paired with another observed phenomenon, that of the wealth disparity. As a premise, poor people and young people spend aggressively, wealthy households invest and don’t spend proportionally to their means, and a significant number of older Americans have no retirement savings to speak of, and therefore cannot spend proportional to offset their declining economic contribution. Essentially, this is a perfect recipe to grind an economy to a halt: Wealthy people don’t spend, elderly workers don’t spend, poor people and young people love to spend but can’t without reasonable access to funding.