Many people, not just young people, are beginning to think about the effects of a generation or more of materialism, debt and massive consumption.  Speaking for myself, I wonder do I need every new gadget, a large house and multiple cars if it stresses me out.  After all, I'm supposed to own my possessions, not the other way around.  Life is more about experiencing and enjoying life than it is about acquiring stuff.

For the record, I'm a committed capitalist and not into the nanny state making my choices.  That means I'm not for banning cars in favor of mass transit, restricting the growth of the suburbs nor the government interfering in the God-given rights of men.  But I do think that some self-reflection about one's lifestyle is appropriate.  Given time, the people come to recognize the excesses in their lives.

Even if you live in the city, there is often no bus route from where you live to where you work.  Too many times everything revolves around downtown, and my work place is a long ways from downtown.  One might have to walk a mile or two to get to a bus stop (in my case, much further, and then there is no bus route near where I work--I might have to walk another two miles to get ot my office) That is not acceptable.  Oklahoma City is not Washington DC, nor New York City...If you have to pay for a taxi to get to work on a daily basis, one might just as well buy a car.  In my case I drive a pickup truck.  My wife keeps the car for her part time job or shopping.  We all have free parking at our work places, so that is not an added expense.  If I worked downtown that might be a factor, I don't neither does anyone else in my immediate family.

I drive about 11 miles each way to work on a daily basis, my wife drives about 20 miles, my son drives probably less than ten, my daughter's distance is maybe about the same.  (I haven't driven either route from point to point to find out, nor have I asked either of them.)

My son lives where a bus may come down the main drag about a1/2 mile from his house, but to get to his work location he would have to change busses I don't know how many times.  It is so much easier to drive.  My daughter has a friend that is 26 now and she still doesn't have her license, I think it was more her home situation than anything.  Kids nowadays need a vehicle to get to their part time jobs, as well.  My daughter worked at a location at least five miles from the home, no bus routes near our home or to where she worked.

Carpooling is available at my workplace or transit by the work place, where you cannot drive to work one day and take the provided transportation another, so what happens for medical appointments?  One reason I haven't signed up for carpooling is that I don't want to adjust my schedule to someone else's, nor does the other person.

As for college debt, that should be addressed while (or before you go) in school.  My daughter paid for her room and board, at the school or in an apartment nearby, while we paid for the tuition.  She has her degree and no educational debt, nor did we pay for everything.  My son didn't finish college, but he had no educational debt either.

Maybe they aren't offering something the customer wants, at an affordable price.  Back in 1969 jsut before my 20 th birthday, I bought my first car for $100.  I suppose that could be translated to $1000 or so now for inflation.  In Pittsburg, Kansas, where I grew up, it is about three miles to the North side of town from where we lived, to a mile South and about a mile West to two to three miles to the East, cars weren't a big necessity, I had to pay for everything, and without much of a job, I couldn't afford one at first either.

Yeah, Taran, thank you: I know his song. Car makers strive to make their more and more crap products saleable by putting in them more HP's and making them more vroom-vroom, in spite of the ever more stringent speed limits; and making them more like wheeled computers, to lure young consumers. It's no winning strategy, because young consumers care for their own - continuously reduced - budget, than car makers'. A picture of cars industry's future is very likely to be just the same as domestic appliances': what makes anyone to change the washing machine or the oven or the fridge every year, when it still works? I would rather recommend the car industry Marketeers and Budgeteers to lift their bottoms from their rich chairs, and go down on the road and know and understand what happens there: that's reality, not their ivory tower. Thank you.