Gen: if you're on the leading edge of a broader societal consensus (which I have a feeling is, in fact, happening), then final capitulation in housing isn't too far off. Once one has accepted the inevitability that opting out is the sole remaining choice, the house -- and all its attendant expenses -- must be the first to go.

Income expectations follow. Once there is no need to keep up a $1,500-$2,500/mo payment, then there is no need to beat your brains out for an ungrateful employer whose demands only ratchet up each year. More with less, you know. While this scenario may not be true for you, specifically, Gen; I suspect it is for the majority of home payment slaves.

Cars are next. They can be kept running tolerably well for 20 or 30 years. Of course, this doesn't produce the same sales tax revenue that buying new ones does.

A key and core shift in a paradigm like this changes economies for generations. Maybe future historians will call it the Great Opt Out.

When the big corporations begin surveying us as to why we're not buying, perhaps the response should be a simple hashtag: #optout.

I hold no hope that any Fortune 500 exec will suffer a sudden epiphany and demand the U.S. DOJ investigate themselves. But at least they'll know *why* their international conglomerate is spiraling into oblivion.

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"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -- Edmund Burke