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Comment by vcolano | Hacker News Reader

I'd agree young Americans are less interested in owning their media and there does seem to be a general trend away from materialism and towards spending any extra income on experiences over objects. However, I reject the notion that the younger generations are less interested in owning property. Young people do want to have a stake in the system, but most places young people are living (especially where they're moving to) it's nearly impossible for most of them to get into the property/housing ownership game to begin with due to housing price inflation and stagnant wages.

If you took millenials and plopped them in the economic context that the young generations of the 50s (or even 70s/80s) had I think this would be a very different story.

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I have a few wild hypotheses on this

1. "Experiences over objects" is driven by the need to share it on social media. Photos at the Eiffel Tower garner more likes than a new BMW car.

2. Peer pressure: Experiences of others being shared on social media and garnering likes causes the follower to do the same.

3. Being raised by relatively wealthy parents with all the stuff, and being disillusioned by hoarding and ownership of stuff.

4. Cheaper and more accessible transportation coupled with a general increase in per capita income.

5. Real estate is expensive now, and being forced to live in small rental units, you've learnt to spend time outdoors.

Yeah, this is a "blame the millenials" article in disguise. The problem is that we're pretty broke compared to our parents, because the big purchases (housing, education, cars) cost way more relative to our incomes. The elder dev sitting across from me bought his house for 10k around 1989. Now every house in that neighborhood costs ~350-400k (and it's one of the bigger and better ones).

The average price of a house sold in the US in 1989 was around $145,000.

The average price of a house sold in the US in 2018 is around $375,000.

If we adjust the 1989 dollars for inflation, that $145,000 becomes about $295,000.

That means, in 2018 dollars, the average house price has gone up around $80,000 or 27% over the past 29 years.

That's a significant increase and we should be concerned about whether or not Americans can afford to purchase houses, but framing the problem as "houses are now 35-40 times as expensive as they were in the late 80's" is terribly inaccurate as a general metric.

house price data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS

inflation calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

One shift in owning vs streaming media is that so much is accessible now.

In the past, you had what you purchased, what was in stock at the video rental place, and what you could VCR-program or catch live on maybe a couple dozen TV channels. Nowadays, bajillions of TV shows and movies are instantly available, such that people don't even have time to watch everything interesting that's available.

I would venture to say that more shows & movies are being created now than in the past, and a lot of them are quite good (probably more quality from series than movies, though).

The value of any individual piece of decent quality media has gone down, given the oversupply. However, there will always be individual pieces of media that are held in importance to a viewer, and those will want to be preserved in some form. Many with a naive assumption that their favorite piece will always be instantly streamable (legally) will certainly have a cold reckoning at some point.

"A stake in the system" comes with restrictions. It's hard to move around when you own a house. And there's various forms of "stake", too. I'd much rather own stocks & bonds and other instruments that I can look at in an app versus a complex bureaucratic like a house. The transaction and maintenance costs are unbelievable.

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