Dry Bourgeois Facts

I wonder if the facts about the behavior of Millennials will change the minds of those who’ve been busily making predictions about them, as noted by Mark Mills at RealClearEnergy:

Over the past couple of years, the data show travel on America’s roads has been growing at a record pace. By year-end 2016 road travel had hit an all-time high, north of 3.2 trillion vehicle-miles. Gasoline demand has followed apace, also hitting new highs. So much for peak driving.

It’s true that because of the Great Recession driving in the U.S. declined by some by 50 billion vehicle-miles in 2009, and stayed flat for half-dozen years. It was the biggest drop and longest stagnation in road travel in automobile history. But the peak theorists confused the effects of economic deprivation with structural changes in behavior. It turns out that Millennial behavior during the recession—living in the basement rather than driving to work, and biking and sharing rides elsewhere—did not reflect a preferred lifestyle so much as an accommodation to the longest recession and slowest recovery in modern U.S. history.

And Millennials aren’t just driving more now, they’ve started buying cars too. Sales data and surveys show that Millennials exhibit more of a preference for new versus used cars compared to the gen Xers that immediately preceded them, and prefer SUVs and luxury cars rather than econo-boxes and electric vehicles. So much for peak oil demand.

and the same thing is being shown in home-buying and other economic behaviors. Maybe Millennials are just as acquisitive and materialistic as the rest of us after all.