Millennials don't trust ads, real estate or Social Security

[William Byers]

Take heed investors - "the majority of millennials (59 percent) would rather rent a house than purchase one." according to the recent article below...and there are 80 million of them.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/why-millennia...

[Jon Holdman]

There's pretty strong evidence we're undergoing a very negative trend for incomes.  If a job can be automated, the people or company provide the automation and the companies that buy the automation make out very well.  The people whose jobs are automated lose.  In the past, as shifts in employment have occurred new jobs have appeared.  That doesn't seem to be happening at the same rate as in the past.  Lots of low skill service jobs (i.e., flipping burgers.)  And the automation is going deeper and deeper.  Lots of blue collar factory jobs have been automated years ago.  Or moved off shore, only to be automated there, too.  White collar jobs have been automated, too.  And more and more jobs are being automated.  That's because there is a HUGE incentive for innovative folks to come up with ways to automate, and for employers to buy that automation. And lots of smart people working on creating that automation, with every more powerful tools (automation, software, "big data") to use to do it.

Millennials who are coming into the workforce are seeing this happening.  That's discussed in the article.  That has the effect of making them leery of taking on a big debt.  It also has the effect of making them want to stay mobile.  Buying a house ties you down.  During the bust, lots of folks were stuck in an underwater house in an area with few jobs.  Had they been renting, they would have moved.  But selling a house is expensive under the best of circumstances (one of those cases where I'm sure a lot of smart people are working hard to introduce automation) and unbearable if you're underwater.  So, these folks see a combination of limited jobs prospects at all, and especially for a good-paying job with opportunities for advancement.  So, buying a house just isn't on the table.  For that matter, this applies to cars, too, and the big car companies are concerned about this trend, too.

Now, I'm generally an optimist about the future, and I think the situation will improve.  I don't know how, but I think this trend will change.  But I do think it will be less and less people working for someone else in a regular full time job and more and more of a freelance economy.  Folks who deal with that will do OK.  A few folks, the ones that come up with this automation or have the ability to take advantage of it (which means capital, in many cases) will do really well.  Folks that just want to collect a paycheck and watch TV all evening will be hurt.  All that translates into a lot of uncertainty about the future.  And folks don't want to commit to a huge pile of debt with an uncertain future.