The High Cost of a Home Is Turning American Millennials into the New Serfs
Millennials want to live in cities.<p>Specifically, millennials want to live <i>near city centers</i>, where they can commute to work by foot, bike, train, bus, or Segway. Basic laws of supply and demand dictate that the value of property, and the rents, must go up, since as society urbanizes there are an increasing number of people vying for a fixed amount of real estate.<p>Part of the American dream of owning a home was predicated on the fact that land would be developed outside the major cities, and homeowners would use newly affordable automobiles to get to their workplace and anywhere else they might want to go. Which led to drab, soulless, lifesucking suburbs and an obsession with gas-guzzling, air-polluting, global-temperature-raising motor vehicles. Ewwwwwwwwwww. How bourgeois, how planet-unconscious, how typically <i>American</i>.<p>So while millennials may not particularly dislike owning homes, they have made lifestyle choices that tend to make home ownership more difficult. Unfortunately, those are the constraints of modern capitalism. Personally, I think we need to rethink our whole economic system. It&#x27;d be great if someone came up with an alternative economic system in which one can have one&#x27;s cake and eat it too, but until that happens we&#x27;re stuck with the situation we&#x27;re in.<p>Meanwhile, houses in the boonies are cheap. If you can remote-work your way into a boonie lifestyle, you can own a home on a rather modest income indeed.