Necessity is the mother of invention. The economic travails of millennials could herald the era of late materialism.

Fewer than a third of millennials own their own home compared to more than half of Generation X at the same age. Very few young people are saving enough for their retirement. Perhaps because these great personal financial goals are increasingly out of reach, more young people than previous generations say they save not to accumulate but "to live my desired lifestyle". In 2018, this aspiration will challenge the materialism of their elders.


The evidence is mounting. Millennials already tend to rate work-life balance over pay. Across the UK, the number of people wanting to work fewer hours now exceeds those who want more. It's a world where our needs to socialise, communicate, be entertained and organised are all contained in a single smart device. When growing your own, sharing, making do and even mending are all the rage, spare money is for experiences, not stuff (which you have nowhere to store anyway).

Materialism has always had its critics, and their voices have been getting louder. Added to the ethical case against greed is the fact that the planet can't cope with everyone consuming more goods indefinitely, as well as the psychological and political critique that acquisitiveness messes up society and our heads. From Fred Hirsch's seminal Social Limits to Growth in 1976 and Oliver James's Affluenza in 2007 to James Wallman's Stuffocation in 2013, many writers have railed against the impact of possessive individualism.

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Perhaps Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity Without Growth, summed up consumerism most pithily as the process by which "we are persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about".

Yet these voices have done little to dent the economic consensus for spending-led growth and, until recently, even less to change the way we live. Those in the mainstream argue societies cannot survive without economic growth, and growth only comes from rising demand. That attitude will increasingly feel misguided.


The reality is that we're already surviving if not without growth then with a great deal less. The promise of consumer capitalism, that most of us would get better off year-on-year, has been broken for well over a decade.

Isn't this broken promise of rising living standards precisely what is driving the rise of Donald Trump, the victory of Brexit and the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn? Perhaps, but what happens when the populists also fail to deliver? Human beings adapt to reality. We may rise up but equally we may, as the very British slogan has it, "Keep calm and carry on."

The most difficult challenge for the late-materialist era - one which we've hardly even begun to face - is getting the politics, policy and economics right. We need politicians to tell us the truth, shape our expectations and give us hope. We need new forms of living, working, travelling and eating.


Late-materialist societies won't generate enough tax revenue for paternalistic national public services so we need social innovation to help communities do more themselves. Technology too is vital. It can liberate us from drudgery, transform human productivity and free us to be creative, or it can ensnare us in new addictions, intrusions and widening inequality.

We could be entering an era of unprecedented human flourishing. Unlike money, possessions or power, I can have more love, friendship, caring and fun without you having less. Beyond populism, young people need a cause that is both realistic and visionary. And 2018 will be the year we understand the huge benefits of late materialism.

Matthew Taylor is chief executive of the RSA and author of the independent review of modern working practices in the UK