Sumner - Non-materialistic millennials and the Great Stagnation

I saw this today, and because I'm a millennial and a sucker for anything people say about millennials (which is probably a very millennial thing to do), I read with much interest. Right at the beginning, he makes a pretty interesting point that I hadn't realized. Sumner:

When I was a teenager in the early 1970s, I looked forward to getting a nice stereo system, with a receiver, amp, turntable and big set of speakers. My 17-year old daughter also likes music, but has no interest in those things. I have no idea why. And I notice this patter in lots of other areas. ... When I look at her lifestyle, it seems shockingly unmaterialistic. (Or maybe she has all these things embedded in her iPhone.)

What I thought was interesting is that when I was a teenager in the early aughts (is that the term we have settled on? because it sounds decidedly like something a millennial would never say), I also wanted a nice stereo system, with receiver, amp, speakers, but no turntable. I'm not a monster. I also wanted a lot of other things, like a nice Les Paul Classic electric guitar like Paul McCartney, a Mitsubishi 3000GT, and a sick Pentium 4 computer with an nVidia GeForce4 graphics card and a gig of ram. What is interesting is that as I got older, I found that a lot of the things that I wanted as a teenager weren't that important to me, e.g. a sports car (I have a car, it gets me from point A to B at about 35mpg with comfort and ease); or that with a full time job, the expense of those things were relatively small compared to my earnings (I recently added up all the material things I really want and found that it would probably only take me about 2 years to save up to splurge and get them all). Part of that is my tastes have changed significantly over the last decade, but perhaps a larger part is that the cost of these materialistic wants has declined substantially. The speakers, computers, guitars, TVs, and cars that I wanted then are either much cheaper now or have cheap substitutes that work just as well or better.

What I most want now is something entirely different than what I wanted as a teenager: time. Time to spend with my awesome wife and three amazing children. Time to actually listen to those speakers, play on that Les Paul, or boot up a game on my sick computer. When I'm working now, I actually think of income as a means of exchange for future time. Every dollar I save is buying back future time. This sounds a lot like slavery, and in some ways, I think that accurately describes how many millennials view their working lives. The rise of extreme early retirement and the gig economy are both ways that millennials are moving away from the traditional American Dream of a 9-5 job and a nice house with lots of stuff. Sumner talks about the rise of camping as another rejection of materialism. I think part of the rise of camping is actually a way for millennials to travel on a budget. Instead of paying $200/night at a hotel, pay $40 for a camping pass. Modern camping is usually a drive in affair with bathrooms and a hot shower nearby. Since technology travels so well, you can be as (un)connected as you want to be.