The High Cost of a Home Is Turning American Millennials Into the New Serfs | Newgeography.com Boomers have structured the battlefield so they have the advantage by implementing land use planning rules, environmental rules, zoning, and other restriction on land, and property use which inures to the benefit of the people who bought the land decades ago, cheap. This deeply injures any who could not purchase the land in the past, and who are forced to purchase land now, dear. And it is very much worse than that simple battlefield preparation. More below. "American greatness was long premised on the common assumption that each generation would do better than the previous one. That is being undermined for the emerging millennial generation.
The problems facing millennials include an economy where job growth has been largely in service and part-time employment, producing lower incomes; the Census bureau estimates they earn, even with a full-time job, $2,000 less in real dollars than the same age group made in 1980. More millennials, notes a recent White House report, face far longer periods of unemployment and suffer low rates of labor participation. More than 20 percent of people 18 to 34 live in poverty, up from 14 percent in 1980. They are also saddled with ever more college debt, with around half of students borrowing for their education during the 2013-14 school year, up from around 30 percent in the mid-1990s. All this at a time when the returns on education seem to be dropping: A millennial with both a college degree and college debt, according to a recent analysis of Federal Reserve data, earns about the same as a boomer without a degree did at the same age. Downward mobility, for now at least, is increasingly rife. Stanford economist Raj Chatty finds that someone born in 1940 had a 92 percent chance of earning more than their parents; a boomer born in 1950 had a 79 percent chance of earning more than their parents. Those born in 1980, in contrast, have just a 46 percent chance." All of this happened due to Boomer policies, which favor the Boomer over either the GenX, or Millennial. The Boomers wanted lots of goodies, and services from government, but didn't want to pay, so instead of paying their taxes, they decided it was fine for the federal government to only use tax revenue to pay for 75% of these goodies and services, and then borrow, on the Millennials dime, the remaining $1 trillion/25% of the expenditure budget. Boomers have been doing this for a decade, and in smaller amounts for far longer. But this was not enough lucre for the Boomers, they decided to cut state aid to colleges, triggering the expansion of the federal lending program, which has driven college costs through the roof. They implemented Obamacare, and other employment damaging regulations, which are primarily designed to shift money from the healthy Millennials to the less healthy, but far richer Boomers. All because the Boomers don't want to pay their way when it comes to healthcare costs. Frankly, this is just the tip of the generational theft iceberg. The Boomers have been attempting to fully depreciate all of the infrastructure the Silent Generation, and the WWII/Greatest generation built, in what appears to be an attempt to deeply limit how much of the costs they are forced to pay. Notice a similar pattern? The Boomers are attempting to scrape as much wealth off of the economy, while they pay only the barest minimum sufficient to keep the wheels turning, everything else is borrowed, and place on the backs of their children, and grandchildren. This is the worst generation of greedy, vermin to ever exist. They are incredible. "In some markets, high rents and weak millennial incomes make it all but impossible to raise a down payment (PDF). According to Zillow, for workers between 22 and 34, rent costs now claim upward of 45 percent of income in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Miami, compared to less than 30 percent of income in metropolitan areas like Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. The costs of purchasing a house are even more lopsided: In Los Angeles and the Bay Area, a monthly mortgage takes, on average, close to 40 percent of income, compared to 15 percent nationally. Like medieval serfs in pre-industrial Europe, America’s new generation, particularly in its alpha cities, seems increasingly destined to spend their lives paying off their overlords, and having little to show for it." Nothing excites the Boomer so much as this generational theft, all wrapped up in the global warming fraud, and the educational indoctrination of the Millennials to keep them from suspecting what is happening. The modern serf was sold into serfdom by their parents attempting to scrape a bit of wealth off the backs of their children. Shocking. But asymmetrical warfare is always fought asymmetrically, to the frustration and anger of the Boomers here. "Rather than strike out on their own, many millennials are simply failing to launch, with record numbers hunkering down in their parents’ homes. Since 2000, the numbers of people aged 18 to 34 living at home has shot up by over 5 million." Millennials are not becoming the serf, they are simply checking out of the role, and only working enough to support their bare minimum needs. This is a brilliant strategy really. The Boomers will need the money long before the Millennials will, and the Millennials are intending for there to be none. For if they do not work, and earn, they cannot be taxed, and enserfed. "One common meme, particularly in the mainstream media, has been that millennials don’t want to buy homes. The new generation, as Fast Company breathlessly reported, is part of “an evolution of consciousness.” Other suggest the young have embraced “the sharing economy,” so that owning a home is simply not to their taste. The well-named site Elite Daily asserts that the vast majority of millennials are headed to “frenetic metropolis” rather than becalmed suburbs. * * * It’s not a lifestyle choice, but economics—high prices and low incomes—that are keeping millennials from buying homes. In survey after survey the clear majority of millennials—roughly 80 percent, including the vast majority of renters—express interest in acquiring a home of their own. Nor are they allergic, as many suggest, to the idea of raising a family, albeit often at a later age, long a major motivation for home ownership. Roughly 80 percent of millennials say they plan to get married, and most of them are planning to have children. Overall, more than 80 percent of millennials already live in suburbs and exurbs, and they are, if anything, moving away from the dense, expensive cities. Since 2010 millennial population trends rank New York, Chicago, Washington, and Portland in the bottom half of major metropolitan areas while the young head out to less expensive, highly suburbanized areas such as Orlando, Austin, and San Antonio." Of course, they don't want to be faced with the facts of what they are doing to their children/grandchildren, so they rationalize, the memes are simple rationalizations placing the blame on the Millennials not the Boomers where they belong. "This is not the planners’ happy future of density dwelling, transit-riding millennials but a present of overcrowding, the nation’s highest level of poverty and, inevitably, a continued drop in fertility in comparison to less regulated, and less costly, states such as Utah, Texas, and Tennessee that have been among those with the biggest surges in millennial migration. Once identified with youth, California’s urban areas are now experiencing a significant decline in both their millennial and Xer populations. By the 2030s, large swaths of the state—particularly along the coast—could become geriatric belts, with an affluent older boomer population served by a largely minority servant class. How feudal!" Again, asymmetrical warfare is fought asymmetrically, and the Millennials will win this war, first by slow walking employment, and second by mostly leaving the locations which are filled with Boomers imposing this serfdom. While a few will continue to move to and work for the old line tech companies in Silicone Valley, and similar areas, the chance that these businesses will continue to be the go-go businesses of the next two decades is about zero. We lost 88% of Fortune 500 companies between 1955 and 2015, when again did the tech companies list on the Fortune 500? Fortune 500 firms in 1955 vs. 2014; 88% are gone This was not a one time thing, our Titans of Industry today will soon be little more than ephemeral memories. And with them will go the high paying jobs, the mass of well paid employees. Once that happens who will there be to buy the homes of the Boomers living in these high cost, low jobs areas? Who will be willing, or able to pay $2 million for the average American home in Palo Alto? The Millennials will have created their own new havens and centers where the business of tomorrow exist, and are creating the jobs and value necessary to attract the Millennials, and the subsequent generations of young productive workers. On top of all of this is the gig economy, which is creating pressure for many, perhaps all non-manual labor jobs, or jobs which actually require the physical presence of the worker, to allow the worker to work remotely. Accountants, lawyers, and most other people in service jobs within a corporation do not need to exist on the employer's work site. Apple's engineers, planners, designers, and all the rest do not need to sit side by side in the new Apple office building. They can work anywhere in the world. As this moves from fantasy to reality, so will the workers move to places they want to live, be that close to their family, or in an exotic country, or just somewhere with a low cost of living. And how is this likely to affect the Boomers? "Ownership of land has always been a critical component of middle-class wealth and power. Those celebrating the retreat from homeownership among millennials are embracing the long-term decline of that middle class, two thirds of whose wealth is in their homes." It is likely to devastate their wealth since so much of it is tied up in their homes, a foolish investment under the best of circumstances. "With so many millenials unable to afford homes, or even to see a path to future ownership, household formation has been far slower than in the recent past. Rather than a surge of middle-class buyers, we are seeing the rise of a largely property-less generation whose members will remain economically marginal into their thirties or forties. Indeed by 2030, according to a recent Deloitte study, millennials will account for barely 16 percent of the nation’s wealth while home-owning boomers, then entering their eighties and nineties, will still control a remarkable 45 percent of the nation’s wealth. If this continues, we may have to all but abandon the notion of the United States as a middle-class nation. Instead of having a new generation that strikes out on their own, we may be incubating a culture that focuses on such things as the latest iPhone, binge watching on Netflix, something they do far more than even their Xer counterparts. Progressives who embrace these developments are abandoning one of the central tenets of mainstream liberalism. In the past, many traditional liberals embraced the old American ideal of dispersed land ownership. “A nation of homeowners,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed, “of people who own a real share in their land, is unconquerable.” Homeownership is not only critical to the economy but provides a critical element of our already fraying civic society; homeowners not only tend to vote more than renters, but they also volunteer more and, as Habitat for Humanity suggests, provide a better environment for raising children." Remember the 16/45% wealth figures are created by "experts" who are expert in the current model, but, who are, and who will be, clueless as to the next model. Obviously, with the Boomers wealth mostly in their homes, if the home prices fall significantly, this mass of wealth will be deeply diminished. So, take these figures with a grain of salt. No one thought Detroit, the great engine of American growth in the 1950, and 1960s could become the impact crater it is today. But it did, and quickly. "On the flip side, high housing prices tend to suppress birthrates. Many of the places with the highest house costs—from Hong Kong to New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco—also have very low birthrates. The four U.S. areas ranked among the bottom 10 in birthrates among the 53 major metropolitan areas in 2015. Over time these can have a dampening impact on economic growth, as is clearly seen today in places like Japan and much of Europe, and increasingly here in the U.S. It’s time for millennials to demand politicians abandon the policies that have enriched the wealthy and stolen their future. That means removing barriers to lots of new housing in cities and, crucially, embracing Frank Lloyd Wright’s notion of Broadacre Cities, with expansive development along the periphery." Demographic death spiral spotted, noted, and calculated, time to impact is unknown, but certain. The Millennials are doing this by voting with their feet, moving out of the high cost areas like New York state, Illinois, California, and many others, This will only spread, especially once the new hotness for jobs, and cost of living become not just apparent, but trendy, and it will. "There are some reasons for hope. The soon-to-develop tsunami of redundant retail space will open up millions of square feet for new homes. A move to prefabricated homes, already common in Europe and Japan, could help reduce costs. Certainly there’s potential demand at the right price—ones that young people can reasonably aspire to and then build lives in. The alternative is to travel back to serfdom and a society sharply divided between a small owner class and many more permanent rent payers. By then, the American dream will be reduced to a nostalgic throwback in an increasingly feudalized country." The tsunami of retail space will be a temporary jobs problem, but it should finally shift our productivity numbers to the positive side. We've been overbuilding retail for more than a decade, and this has eaten too much land, and limited our productivity gains for just as long. Add a general middle supply chain streamlining and we should be back on track with respect to productivity. I am comfortable Americans will not fall into a neo-serfdom, no matter how hard the Boomer make the attempt. There is a generational war, deriving from the greatest generational theft in history, this will likely end badly, for the Boomers not the Millennials. The reckoning will be ugly, and likely finally straighten out our retirement, pension, and savings systems resulting in government programs which are means tested, and many Boomers will be shocked to discover this applies to them as well as everyone else. Mon Dieu!!!! Good.
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