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The Cheapest Generation

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Cheapest Generation

#131

Post by JumpCrisscross »

stephengillie wrote: post #99
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 21, live in New York City, and let my driver's licence lapse over a year ago. I don't plan on owning a house, preferring to drive my surplus wealth into assets I understand better and which don't restrict my mobility, and don't care to own a car. This is not economically motivated - I have comfortable free cash flow and a healthy balance sheet free of personal debt. I pay for a car service and take taxis more tha…

[I] live in New York City ... and don't care to own a car. Your lack of desire for a car has a LOT more to do with living in NYC than your age or social status. You sound just like friends of mine from NYC.

A global trend amplified by us "Millenials" in the U.S. is a preference for urbanisation. Contrary to past generations, I don't plan on ever giving up the pace and energy of the metropolis.

Thus our (and my) psychological shift could be explained as simply as a preference for the hyper-connected urban lifestyle, with decreasing home and car ownership flowing from that change in preferences rather than a direct change in beliefs about cars or houses. Either way, the symptoms look set to persist.

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#132

Post by andyking »

api wrote: post #75
andyking wrote: post #6

I own a car now, simply because I tried relying on public transport for a year and found the experience pretty depressing - it makes your day so very long (I was basically doing 6am-7pm including commuting) and loses you flexibility. I fell into a routine of coming to work, going home, and doing nothing else, because it was so much effort to plan a trip anywhere other than the office. It started to make me sink into…

I finally got a car since I was able to land an abusrdly cheap loan (2%!), but still won't touch a house. Real estate where I live is absurd, and I do not live in one of the big prestigious cities. (I used to, and real estate there was incomprehensible.)

Why did you need a loan to buy a car? I just waited a couple of months until I'd saved enough to buy a small, fairly old car for cash. It's not a fancy car, but it is reliable, cheap to run, cheap to insure, and costs me nothing in terms of financing now.

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#133

Post by bunderbunder »

stephengillie wrote: post #99
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 21, live in New York City, and let my driver's licence lapse over a year ago. I don't plan on owning a house, preferring to drive my surplus wealth into assets I understand better and which don't restrict my mobility, and don't care to own a car. This is not economically motivated - I have comfortable free cash flow and a healthy balance sheet free of personal debt. I pay for a car service and take taxis more tha…

[I] live in New York City ... and don't care to own a car. Your lack of desire for a car has a LOT more to do with living in NYC than your age or social status. You sound just like friends of mine from NYC.

Living or working in the 'burbs is absolutely not an option for our household. The reason is quite directly that we don't want to be reliant on a car.

And wanting to not be reliant on a car is a big part of the reason I moved into the city in the first place. I did the calculation many years ago, and figured out that even from a purely financial perspective it's better - the rent's higher, but cars are impressively expensive to own, fuel, and maintain. And there are a bunch of other financial perks. Living within walking distance of numerous bars saves a mint in cab fares, for example. (Not to mention that suburban taxi service tends to be an enormous PITA.)

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#134

Post by trhtrsh »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #120
api wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what both the left and the right are propagandizing the middle class to do: lower expectations. In some cases, it means lowering our expectations to below those of our parents. Think about that for a minute. Find me a corporation or an entrepreneur who thinks like this. Imagine a CEO saying this to shareholders and the board: "We didn't make our goals this quarter, and many in our industry also showed…

> "We didn't make our goals this quarter, and many in our industry also showed reduced sales numbers. It is clear that we need to reduce our expectations. Next quarter's numbers will be lower, and shareholders are just going to have to take a loss." Uh, they do say that all the time . I tend to agree with the other poster: our expectations are too high. It's a product of having witnessed one of the greatest runups in…

I make high middle class money and I don't know anyone in my peer group who has "A 2500 sqft house, two (or three) cars, regular vacations to Europe or the warm south, maybe a summer house, boats, motorcycles AND other toys".

You are describing the upper echelon of lawyers and execs.

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#135

Post by k2enemy »

Pretty sloppy reporting all around. They aren't even looking at the correct statistics to address the hypothesis.

The article cites the percent of new car sales that were from 21 to 34 year olds in 1985 versus 2010 and find that it falls. What they really want to look at is the percent of 21 to 34 year olds that buy cars. You could have an increasing percent of young people buying cars AND a fall in the percent of car sales driven by young people if young people are making up a smaller proportion of the car buying demographic. Indeed, 21 to 34 year olds make up a smaller proportion of the general U.S. population in 2010 than in 1990 (http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html). It probably isn't enough to reverse their result, but it soaks up some of the claimed behavior.

They make the same type of mistake looking at the percent of teens with a license. Well, 13-15 can't even have a license, so what is happening to the age distribution within "teens"?

Then you have all of the other causal effects that other commenters address. I've come to expect this type of thing from the Atlantic blog posts, so I was surprised to see that this was a magazine article.

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#136

Post by evilduck »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #39
jmduke wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bikes Fixies aren't really popular beyond the hipster demographic; while there are a lot of bikes that cost >$500 dollars, they're generally bought by serious bikers for whom the value proposition is more than worth it. > iPhone The only thing exorbitant to me about the iPhone is the data plan, because of how often I'm in the range of WiFi. I'd argue having a personal GPS, email client, information lookup, etc. etc…

Sunglasses, unfortunately, are in a stranglehold market. You either spend $20 and get colored glass or spend $200 and get an actual product I've found pretty much the opposite. I've owned 3-4 pairs of expensive sunglasses in my life, and all but one of them was crap. I'm convinced that the price differential is for nothing but a designer name. My favorite sunglasses ever I paid $25 for at Rite-Aid, and I liked it so…

Speaking as a bit of a layman on the subject, but I know Oakleys are rated for some level of impact resistance (I think they're polycarbonate lenses like in prescription glasses vs. regular "shattering" plastic that may be found in cheaper sunglasses). It might be important to you if you're the active type.

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#137

Post by wl »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #87
mfringel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, for those of us who know nothing about bikes, why are steel frames suboptimal for commuting?

Weight.

Weight, as long as it isn't excessive, is only something racers need to worry about. I own aluminum and steel frame bicycles and the main difference is how the different materials feel when going across bumps. The weight difference is probably there, but it's not big enough to notice.

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#138

Post by khuey »

padobson wrote: post #63

I found the analysis of the importance of smartphones over vehicles to be very interesting. I pay $150 month for my family talk, text, and data plan, plus another $50 for high speed internet into my house. The payment on my car is $207 a month (own, not lease). I probably spend another $2k-$4k a year on other piece of technology, while doing the bare minimum to keep my car running. And I live in the suburbs in the mi…

And how much does registration/insurance/gas for your car run per year?

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#139

Post by dredmorbius »

goatforce5 wrote: post #64
jmduke wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bikes Fixies aren't really popular beyond the hipster demographic; while there are a lot of bikes that cost >$500 dollars, they're generally bought by serious bikers for whom the value proposition is more than worth it. > iPhone The only thing exorbitant to me about the iPhone is the data plan, because of how often I'm in the range of WiFi. I'd argue having a personal GPS, email client, information lookup, etc. etc…

> Sunglasses, unfortunately, are in a stranglehold market. Most of the sunglass brands that people know, and the stores they buy them from, are owned by a single company: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870451890457536...

This sort of extreme economic consolidation hiding behind an apparently wide range of retailers and/or brands is very common. You could make the same observation, say, of laptops (Foxconn), consumer goods (Proctor & Gamble), or ag products (Monsanto, ConAgra).

Re: The Cheapest Generation

#140

Post by arethuza »

jwoah12 wrote: post #118
mojuba wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or rather, his living in NYC particularly has a lot to do with his age, social status and preferences. People like him prefer big cities because they don't want to own cars. So it's the other way around.

That's a pretty bold generalization. "People like him" prefer big cities for a lot of diverse reasons, most of which are probably not that they do not want to own a car. Not needing to own a car is a result of the convenience of a big city--having everything you need within walking/transit distance. That is the reason I live in NYC. Edit: last sentence was unclear

As far as I am concerned the single biggest thing we as a family have done to improve quality of life is to arrange things so that my wife and I both walk to work and our son can walk to school.
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