The Cheapest Generation

[Typhoon]

Atlantic | Why [US] Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy

Half of a typical family’s spending today goes to transportation and housing, according to the latest Consumer Expenditure Survey, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the height of the housing bubble, residential construction and related activities accounted for more than a quarter of the economy in metro areas like Las Vegas and Orlando. Nation­wide, new-car and new-truck purchases hovered near historic highs. But Millennials have turned against both cars and houses in dramatic and historic fashion. Just as car sales have plummeted among their age cohort, the share of young people getting their first mortgage between 2009 and 2011 is half what it was just 10 years ago, according to a Federal Reserve study.

Needless to say, the Great Recession is responsible for some of the decline. But it’s highly possible that a perfect storm of economic and demographic factors—from high gas prices, to re-­urbanization, to stagnating wages, to new technologies enabling a different kind of consumption—has fundamentally changed the game for Millennials. The largest generation in American history might never spend as lavishly as its parents did—nor on the same things. Since the end of World War II, new cars and suburban houses have powered the world’s largest economy and propelled our most impressive recoveries. Millennials may have lost interest in both.

Just a recession or a structural change?

Anecdote. I use car sharing and public transit. Regarding a car as a service, just as public transit, rather than a rapidly depreciating consumer good to be owned [and maintained] made sense to me.
I know that a number of my friends in N Am do the same.

Of course, this only work in urban centres with a sufficiently high density and with the associated infrastructure.

[Enki]

Structural change. We are witnessing one of the most dramatic structural changes in all of human history.

Virtual goods and common property are going to completely alter the landscape. A lot of people of my generation own their clothes and their computer, and practically nothing else.

[noddy]

in australia the baby boomers started with cheap shacks that they bought for 2 times the average wage when they were young and then spent 40 odd years improving them into mega mansions that cost 7 times the average wage and then changing the laws so that all houses must be mega mansions.

the next generation is kinda struggling to work out how they are meant to get from "here to there" when its compulsory to be "there" at the start.

ive mumbled many a time on this retarded reality, the middle class screwed itself in this country, zero sympathy for em and thats about it really.

[Enki]

in australia the baby boomers started with cheap shacks that they bought for 2 times the average wage when they were young and then spent 40 odd years improving them into mega mansions that cost 7 times the average wage and then changing the laws so that all houses must be mega mansions.

the next generation is kinda struggling to work out how they are meant to get from "here to there" when its compulsory to be "there" at the start.

ive mumbled many a time on this retarded reality, the middle class screwed itself in this country, zero sympathy for em and thats about it really.

The people I know who live the most richly sleep in shacks they built and lavender in holes that they have dug.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

Structural change. We are witnessing one of the most dramatic structural changes in all of human history.

Virtual goods and common property are going to completely alter the landscape. A lot of people of my generation own their clothes and their computer, and practically nothing else.

That sounds better and better the more I think of it. The only things I would add is my tea service from mismatched cups and saucers and my bumpy copper kettle I rescued from this street intersection one time......'>........

[noddy]

in australia the baby boomers started with cheap shacks that they bought for 2 times the average wage when they were young and then spent 40 odd years improving them into mega mansions that cost 7 times the average wage and then changing the laws so that all houses must be mega mansions.

the next generation is kinda struggling to work out how they are meant to get from "here to there" when its compulsory to be "there" at the start.

ive mumbled many a time on this retarded reality, the middle class screwed itself in this country, zero sympathy for em and thats about it really.

The people I know who live the most richly sleep in shacks they built and lavender in holes that they have dug.

being a useful part of something and a say in your own world is the true richness, its being a valid human being.

i will do my essay on indifference one day soon (next few months anyway) because everyone has one essay in them and this one is mine.

ive had many a thought about tolerance/indifference and the lie of the modern west as i try and gather my ammunition against accusations of wife beating and slavery.

you can tell which cultures are truly "tolerant" by the amount of different lifestyles and little independant villages they still have.

for example the solomon islands with less than a million people has over 64 distinct languages and cultural boundaries and many more hundreds of subsets and regional variations... they are all largely indifferent to each others well being, yet also tolerant of each others existance, no slippery slope hyperbole from them, they usually just get on with their own lives and are a happy people.. the polynesians are one of my fave cultural groups, unless they are western city bred and suffering from atomisation and drunken violence.. queue once where warrrios.

every now and then a certain groups population gets out of control and they have wars (recent one being the malaita people versus the guadacanal people) but in terms of numbers of deaths, its far less people far less often than the numbers of americans in ghetto wars or prisons.

it will be a cold day in hell when the progressives and conservatives in america treat each other with this "indifference", its a battle for control and winner takes all.

[noddy]

as to how to build such an environment for yourself in the modern mega city and how relevant it is to those living in densely populated areas, thats a far more difficult thing to solve.. their are reasons that human migration happens and the above is the root cause every time from my perspective.

i wish i was rich enough to do an experiment on a high density apartment block in an area that had enough rainfall.

using all the available knowledge and technology just how much you could provide in terms of food and water by utilising every possible surface area and waste product efficiently, a complete and utter break from the centralised supply meme with side effects on the human emotional levels that bring people back into their own lives and their "small world" responsibilities rather than abstract centralised ones for dubious agendas.

[Endovelico]

The Portuguese are a highly individualistic people. We are quite tolerant of other people's ways because we don't see ourselves as a cultural entity. We know we are Portuguese, but we don't really know what that means, except for a capacity to speak Portuguese. We are caring for other people's needs but not because of nationality or cultural affinity, only because we don't like seeing people suffering. Expressions like "team player" are completely meaningless to us. We can work together but not because of any sense of loyalty to the group. We work together because some things can better be achieved when you work together. We dislike laws. Any laws. We prefer doing what is right because we want to do right, not because someone tells us what to do. Which also means that people breaking the law can more easily get away with it. We have few principles, but we function peacefully enough. It looks as if we live by our instincts, but our instincts are not aggressive, so that we don't need a very structured society.

A people like this is very vulnerable to any crisis such as the one we are experiencing, but can also adapt very quickly, because it is exceptionally flexible. In three years time we went from being a country with a trade deficit equal to 10% of GDP, to a small trade surplus. We decreased petrol consumption by 25%, and everything seems to be working just as well as before. Unemployment has gone up, individual suffering has increased but, at the same time, deposits in Portuguese banks have increased. Eventually there will be a collapse, but we seem to be coping better than it was to be expected. Are we from another planet?...

[Ammianus]

The good Colonel apparently just outed himself as a 60 year old Japanese rockstar :

http://twitter.com/ttoshihiro/status/8762601302

from the mistplaced Atlantic link in his post.

[Ammianus]

In regards to the article:

Structural shift or not, its here to stay, permanently. Already we're getting smarmy sentiments about how its much more environmentally sound, sustainable, cool, hip, or less stressful and liberating it is to be less hung up on the previous "materialism". None of it can disguise the brutal truth of permanently lowered standards of living and opportunities for uplift and the lobotomized resignation accompanying it.

[Endovelico]

In regards to the article:

Structural shift or not, its here to stay, permanently. Already we're getting smarmy sentiments about how its much more environmentally sound, sustainable, cool, hip, or less stressful and liberating it is to be less hung up on the previous "materialism". None of it can disguise the brutal truth of permanently lowered standards of living and opportunities for uplift and the lobotomized resignation accompanying it.

Do you believe that it would be possible to have the Chinese and the Indian peoples consuming and using resources in a manner similar to ours? Would there be enough resources in the world to allow for that? If not, then we must learn accepting "lowered standards of living". The alternative would be nuclear war against those two nations, to decimate them and prevent them from taking "our" resources...

[noddy]

The Portuguese are a highly individualistic people. We are quite tolerant of other people's ways because we don't see ourselves as a cultural entity. We know we are Portuguese, but we don't really know what that means, except for a capacity to speak Portuguese. We are caring for other people's needs but not because of nationality or cultural affinity, only because we don't like seeing people suffering. Expressions like "team player" are completely meaningless to us. We can work together but not because of any sense of loyalty to the group. We work together because some things can better be achieved when you work together. We dislike laws. Any laws. We prefer doing what is right because we want to do right, not because someone tells us what to do. Which also means that people breaking the law can more easily get away with it. We have few principles, but we function peacefully enough. It looks as if we live by our instincts, but our instincts are not aggressive, so that we don't need a very structured society.

A people like this is very vulnerable to any crisis such as the one we are experiencing, but can also adapt very quickly, because it is exceptionally flexible. In three years time we went from being a country with a trade deficit equal to 10% of GDP, to a small trade surplus. We decreased petrol consumption by 25%, and everything seems to be working just as well as before. Unemployment has gone up, individual suffering has increased but, at the same time, deposits in Portuguese banks have increased. Eventually there will be a collapse, but we seem to be coping better than it was to be expected. Are we from another planet?...

but what happens when you start talking about "one europe" and expecting the germans to have the same viewpoint about sensible as you do.

this, to a certain extent is the issue in the larger places like america and even in its own way australia... many thousands of kilometres and different immigrant groups seperate the various states and the dominance of the 2 large eastern cities leaves the rest feeling like portugal against germany and england.

[noddy]

In regards to the article:

Structural shift or not, its here to stay, permanently. Already we're getting smarmy sentiments about how its much more environmentally sound, sustainable, cool, hip, or less stressful and liberating it is to be less hung up on the previous "materialism". None of it can disguise the brutal truth of permanently lowered standards of living and opportunities for uplift and the lobotomized resignation accompanying it.

as you may have noticed humans are as a rule, very vain creatures, so what exactly is wrong about the generations that are going to get lowered standards of living whether they like it or not, short circuiting this drama by claiming they never wanted it in the first place.

the baby boomer dream of endless improvement via stable employment and wise governance and constant innovation aint exactly happening now is it ?

that was their vanity, why is it lobotomised resignation to have a different vanity ?

im quite keen to get rid of the compulsory middle class rules and baby boomer standards of living, they make me work far to hard for crap im barely interested in and steal time from things like friends and family and personal projects that make me feel human.

[Typhoon]

The good Colonel apparently just outed himself as a 60 year old Japanese rockstar :

http://twitter.com/ttoshihiro/status/8762601302

from the mistplaced Atlantic link in his post.

How that link ended up going to Toshi's twitter is a mystery.

Anyways, it's now been fixed.

[Azrael]

Speaking of Australia, the Prime Minister is from Wales and the Leader of the Opposition is from London, England. Perhaps that's part of the indifference issue right there.

Perhaps the opposition would have a better chance of being the next government if they brought back Australia-born Malcom Turnbull.

Now, the factions are close to tied in polls.

[noddy]

Speaking of Australia, the Prime Minister is from Wales and the Leader of the Opposition is from London, England. Perhaps that's part of the indifference issue right there.

Perhaps the opposition would have a better chance of being the next government if they brought back Australia-born Malcom Turnbull.

Now, the factions are close to tied in polls.

the fact hes a conservative catholic molded by anglo capitalists and shes an atheist union leader is potentially a greater source of worldview dissonance

having said that, northern and western australia are typically anglo/asian/aboriginal demographics and south eastern australia has alot of greek/italian/middle eastern demographics and it is a mini EU thing going on which isnt obvious to outsiders - asians and anglos are typically the ones who are anti government or oblivious to government and the others are far more interested in government interventions and solutions... queue the dissonance.

the poor old aborigines tend to be screwed either way, indifference leading to neglect or indifference leading to crude social engineering intervention, they have ugly choices and quite rightly have no interest in them.

the factions are very close and the choices are bleak.. i can have economic and social conservatism or i can have economic and social progressivism.. we dont yet have anyone putting their hand up for economic conservatism and social progressivism, besides malcom turnbull actually.. but he has a gary johnson snowball chance in a gop hell of leading the liberal party ;P

[Ammianus]

In regards to the article:

Structural shift or not, its here to stay, permanently. Already we're getting smarmy sentiments about how its much more environmentally sound, sustainable, cool, hip, or less stressful and liberating it is to be less hung up on the previous "materialism". None of it can disguise the brutal truth of permanently lowered standards of living and opportunities for uplift and the lobotomized resignation accompanying it.

Do you believe that it would be possible to have the Chinese and the Indian peoples consuming and using resources in a manner similar to ours? Would there be enough resources in the world to allow for that? If not, then we must learn accepting "lowered standards of living". The alternative would be nuclear war against those two nations, to decimate them and prevent them from taking "our" resources...

This current phenomenon in the US, though not entirely unconnected with what your alluding to, is at most tangential to it.

[Ammianus]

In regards to the article:

Structural shift or not, its here to stay, permanently. Already we're getting smarmy sentiments about how its much more environmentally sound, sustainable, cool, hip, or less stressful and liberating it is to be less hung up on the previous "materialism". None of it can disguise the brutal truth of permanently lowered standards of living and opportunities for uplift and the lobotomized resignation accompanying it.

as you may have noticed humans are as a rule, very vain creatures, so what exactly is wrong about the generations that are going to get lowered standards of living whether they like it or not, short circuiting this drama by claiming they never wanted it in the first place.

the baby boomer dream of endless improvement via stable employment and wise governance and constant innovation aint exactly happening now is it ?

that was their vanity, why is it lobotomised resignation to have a different vanity ?

im quite keen to get rid of the compulsory middle class rules and baby boomer standards of living, they make me work far to hard for crap im barely interested in and steal time from things like friends and family and personal projects that make me feel human.

This expectation of rising standards of living and "endless improvement" are not only the fevered imaginations of the baby boomers, but also the very socioeconomic foundation the US currently rests upon, and arguably one of the foremost guiding principles that has sustained it since it was founded. If this bedrock were to not only change radically (which is guaranteed), but to also disappear (very likely), then it bodes ill for the American nation, to put it mildly, not that you as an outback bogan would understand.

I have no intrinsic problems with accepting a "lower" standard of living, provided that is competently managed and transitioned, is distributed as equally and justly as possible in its burdens, and leads quickly to something better. I do have problems, big problems, with certain ideological classes using it (or even defending it) for purposes of schadenfreude, moral puritanism, and various sundry agendas.

[noddy]

In regards to the article:

Structural shift or not, its here to stay, permanently. Already we're getting smarmy sentiments about how its much more environmentally sound, sustainable, cool, hip, or less stressful and liberating it is to be less hung up on the previous "materialism". None of it can disguise the brutal truth of permanently lowered standards of living and opportunities for uplift and the lobotomized resignation accompanying it.

as you may have noticed humans are as a rule, very vain creatures, so what exactly is wrong about the generations that are going to get lowered standards of living whether they like it or not, short circuiting this drama by claiming they never wanted it in the first place.

the baby boomer dream of endless improvement via stable employment and wise governance and constant innovation aint exactly happening now is it ?

that was their vanity, why is it lobotomised resignation to have a different vanity ?

im quite keen to get rid of the compulsory middle class rules and baby boomer standards of living, they make me work far to hard for crap im barely interested in and steal time from things like friends and family and personal projects that make me feel human.

This expectation of rising standards of living and "endless improvement" are not only the fevered imaginations of the baby boomers, but also the very socioeconomic foundation the US currently rests upon, and arguably one of the foremost guiding principles that has sustained it since it was founded. If this bedrock were to not only change radically (which is guaranteed), but to also disappear (very likely), then it bodes ill for the American nation, to put it mildly, not that you as an outback bogan would understand.

i might be an outback bogan, or atleast enjoy a bit of that, but ive been watching the intermulectuals discuss this for many years now and even my reduced capicity gorilla brain understands this version of events is itself just one opinion and one version of the success.. i dont really feel i need to remind you that some think this "endless improvement" comes from letting people respond to change in their own way and some think it needs to be solved by interventions... so, ill need some more specificity if their is more than insults to be extracted from this speil.

the "baby boomer" dream to me is not indicitive of the history of the new world west, its an oddity that arrived post war and post colonialism and rejected most of the beliefs that came before it.

it has a fixation on housing always becoming more expensive and on taxes and rules and the powers of democracy that never existed in any previous generation, i know this because i have spent a fair bit of time with older people.

its built off their life experience alone and then they didnt bother having enough kids to grow it so that the demographic numbers that powered them and their experience looking after a much smaller elder generation could be replicated when they got old.

in their world jobs where stable and safe and all the worlds resources where theirs alone because the rest of the world had no interest in them.

these are all the issues that have been discussed ad nauseum on these forums for many years now.

I have no intrinsic problems with accepting a "lower" standard of living, provided that is competently managed and transitioned, is distributed as equally and justly as possible in its burdens, and leads quickly to something better. I do have problems, big problems, with certain ideological classes using it (or even defending it) for purposes of schadenfreude, moral puritanism, and various sundry agendas.

aaah, funny thing language, i can agree with that some portions of that but as always twitch at the competently managed bit, not enough political examples of that in my lifetime for me to want to sit round waiting for it.

i most certainly am aware of the fact that the mass movement of people to the cities based on the money gained from exports has resulted in a truckload of people with nothing to fall back upon, spotted that years ago when working in central melbourne with the government funded arts people, all good fun but my own sense of its fragility scared me too much to feel comfortable about it... for us its primary industry exports, for you it was manufacturing and a trusted economic system.. yours is unlikely to come back like it was, ours is dependant on china not stuffing up its incredible challenges and already that is scaling down.

i also come across nastier than i perhaps should because i dont really believe people can break bad habits until they are forced, its definately true of me and my experience with others, hence im more in favour of the hard stop on future debt than a "caring person" might be..

more simply put, i dont believe on any level we can refactor this into something that is better until the status quo maintained by debt is forced to re-evaluate, managed transitions sound fanciful to me, and id need a lot more detail that reveals more nuance in how to get all these disparate sundry agendas agreeing on something before i started taking it more seriously than any other middle class dinner conversation with its endless "but it would be easy if everyone agreed with me "

oh, and once again im reminded im talking to an american and your version of my right wing is so much more extreme than mine i realise most of my words are essentially useless and have different meanings to you,

our social structure has copped alot of privatisation via american influence but its still different and is no where near as extreme, the main "victims" of my version of this are the tax funded entitled ones on upper middle class wages who "manage" us with endless rules that make them more important, we have three layers of them from the local council, to the state and then the federals, all taking money and then all passing the buck for responsibility.

thats 30% of the tax pool in my country, if you also cut the corporate funding then its real money that could be better spent by me on my poor or the very east make its way out to the poor in general, not their comfy lifestyles at everyone elses expense.

id also prefer only one layer of government that then does take responsbility and because i want democracy and my voice to mean something, thats as local a government as possible.. the federal government is beyond my reach.

[Simple Minded]

The people I know who live the most richly sleep in shacks they built and lavender in holes that they have dug.

Amen bro, it has always been true "that man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest." Very few wanted to hear that thruout the 80s, 90s and first half of the 00s.

Structural change. We are witnessing one of the most dramatic structural changes in all of human history.

Virtual goods and common property are going to completely alter the landscape. A lot of people of my generation own their clothes and their computer, and practically nothing else.

Also amen bro. Zeitgeist is changing and with it culture. Culture always determines what one's audience considers to be the symbols of status or to be useless.

[Enki]

as to how to build such an environment for yourself in the modern mega city and how relevant it is to those living in densely populated areas, thats a far more difficult thing to solve.. their are reasons that human migration happens and the above is the root cause every time from my perspective.

i wish i was rich enough to do an experiment on a high density apartment block in an area that had enough rainfall.

using all the available knowledge and technology just how much you could provide in terms of food and water by utilising every possible surface area and waste product efficiently, a complete and utter break from the centralised supply meme with side effects on the human emotional levels that bring people back into their own lives and their "small world" responsibilities rather than abstract centralised ones for dubious agendas.

I was up on a green roof yesterday playing around all day. Had some meetings there. It's this building that is a sort of incubation space for tons of cool companies. They have a video studio, design firms, a robotics lab and a DIY synthetic biology lab.

They were growing a ton of stuff up on that roof. Someone has a nice Aquaponics setup with Tilapia in the tanks and growing tomatoes, basil and various other things I didn't identify. Growing in some soil were these super hot red peppers.

A 40 story apartment building was going up next door. We were chatting with the construction workers because they were at the floor that was just right on the level with our roof. Next week it will be forever taller than the roof I was on. The building is going up super-quick. A lot of stuff that was greenlit in Brooklyn before the 2007 crash during the first Bloomberg Administration is going up now. Brooklyn is going to have a skyline to rival any city in the country on its own by the end of the year. From where I was there was a skyline view of downtown Brooklyn.

The thing I can never get over my awe of when it comes to NYC is that it has suburbs that have skyscrapers.

[noddy]

as to how to build such an environment for yourself in the modern mega city and how relevant it is to those living in densely populated areas, thats a far more difficult thing to solve.. their are reasons that human migration happens and the above is the root cause every time from my perspective.

i wish i was rich enough to do an experiment on a high density apartment block in an area that had enough rainfall.

using all the available knowledge and technology just how much you could provide in terms of food and water by utilising every possible surface area and waste product efficiently, a complete and utter break from the centralised supply meme with side effects on the human emotional levels that bring people back into their own lives and their "small world" responsibilities rather than abstract centralised ones for dubious agendas.

I was up on a green roof yesterday playing around all day. Had some meetings there. It's this building that is a sort of incubation space for tons of cool companies. They have a video studio, design firms, a robotics lab and a DIY synthetic biology lab.

They were growing a ton of stuff up on that roof. Someone has a nice Aquaponics setup with Tilapia in the tanks and growing tomatoes, basil and various other things I didn't identify. Growing in some soil were these super hot red peppers.

outside all the cliches and paranoid hyperboles both my worker-right wing friends and workless-left wing inner city friends all seem to have gone full bore into home gardening and many are trying things like aquaponics, all completely seperate from each other,yet all noticing simmilar patterns.

the main dissonance ive noticed is that for an inner city person its all about challenging private ownership because everything is owned by someone else and their is no public space or personal space.. its all user pays and other peoples rules.. yet for the outer suburbs person its all about increasing private ownership because the main danger is corrupt local councils deciding your space is worth more money to them for some development project they are getting kick backs on.

both sides are absolutely correct and this just gives me more reasons to challenge this daft "one set of rules for many different contexts" that the federal government powers and arguments create.. we *should not* be forced to argue in a dissonant fashion when the contexts are so different.

A 40 story apartment building was going up next door. We were chatting with the construction workers because they were at the floor that was just right on the level with our roof. Next week it will be forever taller than the roof I was on. The building is going up super-quick. A lot of stuff that was greenlit in Brooklyn before the 2007 crash during the first Bloomberg Administration is going up now. Brooklyn is going to have a skyline to rival any city in the country on its own by the end of the year. From where I was there was a skyline view of downtown Brooklyn.

The thing I can never get over my awe of when it comes to NYC is that it has suburbs that have skyscrapers.

i hope they can remain so and am watching the american and european responses to this with an eagle eye, knowing full well that these problems will be our problems soon enough, the only question is the timing.

it would be a great thing if someone, somewhere does work out ways to change the system without resorting to infantile blaming of boogie men.

parts of south east asia pacfic have this awesome thing going on were the traditional village support systems (food and housing) are still in place and viable and then they get to play capitalism only when they feel like it for extra toys and goodies, this lets capitalism be as harsh as it wants to be without any real consequences to the safety of these peoples lives.. this is what the west has lost and creates so much extra dissonance, especially from me, and why i rant despite myself.

[Simple Minded]

good observations noddy. Nothing seems to delineate the two parties in the US more than population density.

[Enki]

good observations noddy. Nothing seems to delineate the two parties in the US more than population density.

It's very true. There are a million and one subtle ways in which living in a dense environment is different from living in a rural environment.

[Mr. Perfect]

So Tinker if living in a hand built pallet board shack and sh!$%ng in your own hand dug hole is the new standard of living can you tell me why you guys were so enthusiastic about flushing all those trillions into the ocean via STPN? I think I can make a pallet shack and dig a hole without a single dollar of it. Let me know your thoughts.

BTW this conversation is the one that could give you a clue as to how you'll lose the women vote.