Are Some Haters Of Government Sensing The Looming Regeneracy?

[Kinser79]

(03-18-2017, 02:45 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: But you no doubt are the exception rather than the rule. Millennials seem to have embrace the more urban, transit-oriented lifestyle for now, but will they do an about-face once they really begin to start families? Or will they revert to embracing the car-dependent suburbs just as Boomers did? Recall that Boomers too were more urban friendly in their youthful mostly single days as well. Cars and driving do mean freedom, yes. But don't all the huge expenses associated with car driving (gas, insurance (now required by law just about everywhere), maintenance, licensing, parking fees, and most notably financing as almost all of us have to purchase them on time, negate much of the convenience factor? Apparently not enough to make very much of a dent. But this should be happening simply because most people's income is not nearly as secure as it was in the days following WWII when the car culture really took off. So far we don't seem to have the will; you are right on that. Again, it most likely would take a fallout just as bad or worse than the Great Depression.

1.  I'm not sure if I'm an exception or not.  I both own a car and drive.  I just do not subscribe to the notion that the automobile is itself an expression of freedom.  Often the reality of vehicle ownership and driving is quite different from the notion that has been sold.  I've just never been happy with suburbia.  I either want to live in the center of everything in a big city, or I want to live in the middle of no-where.  At present I'm living in a near suburb, but functionally it operates more like a small town than a suburb. 

2.  I think it depends.  Many Millenials have already started to have families.  Some have not.  But the fact remains that if the goal is to have children women have a limited time frame in which to have them.  At present those who do have families are suffering through a phenomenon known as "drive till you qualify".  In short regardless of what they may want they are in fact being forced into car dependent suburbs.

3.  My experience with Boomers is that they were never really friendly with Urban living unless their previous experience itself was urban.  White boomers in particular seem to be the most prone to "wanting to get back to the land" even though they have no intention of taking up agriculture or actual rural living.

4.  When it comes to the notion of cars and "freedom":  Yes with a car you can go where you want when you want, yadda yadda yadda.  At the same time you have to make payments on the car, buy fluids and fuel for the car, maintain the car, pay taxes on the car, drive in shitty places, be stuck in endless hours o traffic.  In short you trade one set of non-freedom for an other set of non-freedom.  Honestly the freest I've ever felt was when I lived in Chicago or New York City.  Both areas where owning a car is not the best way to get around.

5.  I would say that eventually as energy becomes much more expensive, and as liquid fuels in particular become much more expensive we'll see a reversal of what is deseirable as living spaces and what is not.  I fully expect that unlike now with urban cores of blight and middle-class and upper class suburbs we'll see the middle classes and upper classes flowing into cities (gentrifying the areas) and the poor going out to the suburbs seeking cheap rent.

US will be looking more like Brazil in more than one way.