In April 2019, Alyssa Ahlgren wrote an Alpha News column from a coffee shop that reads today like a warning delivered years ahead of schedule. Her surroundings supplied the argument: people talking freely, laptops open, food arriving quickly and cars passing outside. The ordinary conveniences of American life were everywhere. So were political demands to dismantle the economic system that helped make those conveniences ordinary.

Ahlgren, then 26, was asking a question that deserves another hearing: How did so many people surrounded by prosperity become convinced they had never experienced it?

Vehicles. Reliable food supplies. Technology that would have looked like magic to earlier generations. The freedom to associate with whomever we choose. These things are woven so deeply into American life that we rarely stop to consider what it took to build them—or what it would take to lose them.

That does not mean every American has an easy life. It means that a serious conversation about hardship should begin with some understanding of the extraordinary productive capacity surrounding us.

Instead, we have developed a peculiar habit: enjoying the benefits of a market economy while treating its very existence as an indictment.

Boy, did she nail it.

Consider popular streamer Hasan Piker, who spends plenty of time denouncing capitalism while earning money in the marketplace he condemns. Here he is making his case against the system:

There is something remarkably convenient about turning denunciations of capitalism into a profitable personal brand. The audience gets the revolutionary rhetoric. The commentator gets the revenue.

Of course, earning money does not disqualify anyone from criticizing the economy. But if your own success depends on an audience, private enterprise and the freedom to sell what you produce, those details deserve a place in the lecture.

The same tension follows elected socialists who build personal wealth while portraying the market as a machine designed to keep ordinary people down. Consider Bernie Sanders discussing American prosperity:

Sanders has enjoyed commercial success as an author while advocating democratic socialism. Good for him for selling books. Writing something people voluntarily pay to read is a perfectly respectable way to earn money.

It is also a useful demonstration of how markets work. A writer produces something, readers decide whether they want it, and a network of publishers, printers, distributors and retailers helps make the exchange possible. That deserves at least a footnote in the argument against capitalism.

The contradiction extends beyond politicians and internet celebrities. Ordinary consumers can condemn corporations in one breath and spend heavily on luxury entertainment and branded experiences in the next.

Financial commentator Caleb Hammer has heard enough of that routine. Listen to his exchange with a client who had just been criticizing capitalism:

Sometimes the credit-card statement tells a more revealing story than the political speech.

There are legitimate arguments about wages, housing costs, debt and corporate behavior. But blaming the entire economic system for financial decisions you keep making is a convenient way to avoid examining those decisions. A luxury purchase does not become an act of resistance because you complain about the company afterward.

Then there is the vocabulary problem. Before we redesign an economy, perhaps we should establish what the words mean. Listen to these young critics explain the capitalism they oppose:

When a confident denunciation falls apart at the first request for a definition, we are looking at a slogan that has traveled farther than the reasoning behind it.

That matters because slogans eventually become campaign promises, and campaign promises can become policies affecting everyone’s livelihood. An economic theory should face more scrutiny than a social-media caption.

Clay Smith raises another uncomfortable point about college-age disillusionment: What happens when students leave school without skills that employers or customers are willing to pay for?

The ability to produce something other people value still matters. A degree can help develop that ability, but the credential alone cannot guarantee demand for your work.

Young people deserve an honest explanation of that bargain before they borrow heavily for an education. They also deserve better than being told every disappointing outcome proves that free enterprise has failed them.

Another familiar claim holds that billionaires somehow prevent everyone else from creating wealth. Will Witt takes on that argument in the same conversation:

Wealth is not a fixed pie. A business can create a useful product, hire workers, serve customers and generate new value. One person’s success does not automatically require someone else’s failure.

That does not make every fortune admirable or every business practice defensible. Fraud, political favoritism and barriers that protect powerful incumbents deserve scrutiny. But treating wealth creation itself as wrongdoing leads us toward punishing the activity we need more of.

For an everyday illustration of what a productive market economy can deliver, walk into an American grocery store. A Wall Street Journal opinion writer wants viewers to appreciate the achievement hiding in plain sight:

The produce aisle alone represents an enormous undertaking: farmers, equipment manufacturers, truck drivers, warehouse workers, refrigeration systems and retailers coordinating across distances most shoppers never consider.

We should absolutely care when groceries become harder to afford. That is a reason to understand how food reaches the shelf and what drives its cost. The abundance itself is an achievement worth protecting.

Ahlgren’s closing warning was that familiarity can erase perspective. People raised with extraordinary conveniences may begin to regard them as permanent features of the world, requiring neither explanation nor protection.

Here is my closing argument: The phone in your hand, the laptop across the table, the food available on demand and the freedom to sit in a coffee shop criticizing the whole arrangement did not appear by accident.

They depend on people producing, investing, innovating and taking risks. They depend on institutions that allow those efforts to flourish. And they depend on a public capable of distinguishing problems worth fixing from achievements worth preserving.

We can improve this system. We should demand honest competition, challenge political favoritism and make it easier for more Americans to build something of their own.

But we ought to be suspicious of a movement that sells contempt for prosperity while living comfortably on its proceeds.

Ungratefulness at this scale is a luxury only the prosperous can afford—for a while.