This article is bizarre. It starts off with a story that fails to justify why avocado toast is relevant, meanders through personal antecdotes, then drones on about the history of advocados in the US. Pass.
> Today, nine out of ten imported avocados in the U.S. are from Mexico.
>A politics of avocadoism is intrinsic to this history. If you worry about the eclipse of American agriculture—or the market effects of cheap, distance-shipped produce—you’d be right to regard this international trade with disgust.
>If, on the other hand, you celebrate competitive international trade and cosmopolitan access, the avocado is a fruit of heroism.
The point that the author is making is that the "anti-avacado" sentiment is a result of anti-urban and anti-globalization/anti-globalist sentiment. It's something that cities have more access to, is relatively new, and is imported from mexico. Its a partisan division.
> nine out of ten imported avocados in the U.S. are from Mexico.
Why is the author surprised that 90% of IMPORTED avocados come from the only avocado-producing nation with which we share a land border? Why even state that figure? I'm surprised it's not higher; there must be mighty tasty avocados down in Central America.
In fact, only 70% of all avocados eaten in the US are imports. [1] So, only 63% come from Mexico.
But on the other hand, lots of urbanites extol the virtues of growing local, buying local and not adding to needless transportation (fossil fuels) of food (meanwhile, they drink lots of bottled water, but never mind).
The article is bizarre because the whole 'avocado toast' thing is, IMHO, entirely Australian and I'm not all that sure it makes sense when the meme is taken internationally.
Edit: to clarify, yes, it's spread to the US, it's had its rounds in the US media people know about it (this article is proof). But so many parts of the 'avocado toast vs home ownership' are unique to Australia.
Stage 1 (October 2016): Australian Demographer Bernard Salt lamented young people spending $22 on 'smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread'[1]. Australians have a conniption fit.
Stage 2 (May 2017): With the avocado/housing nexus now established as a local meme, general waste of space Tim Gurner uses it to attack people who think he own so many houses [2]. Americans sit up and take notice.
Stage 3 (July 2017): Long-form articles commissioned during Stage 2 begin to arrive, having made their circuitous way through the publishing industry too slow to have any relevance whatsoever.
Thank you for this summary of how this story evolved.
Millennials indeed pay premium prices for staples (nespresso coffee costs around 6 times as much as normal homebrewed coffee) whilst being unable to buy a house. Which begs the question:
Is this an hen/egg-problem?
You could say that spendthrifts are only getting what they deserve. But...
What if the only reason millennials are pouring so much of their income into consumables (incl. rent) is the unrealistic outlook of ever paying off a mortgage (let alone student debt)?
Maybe this bleak outlook for owning property is caused by macro-economic effects (era of zero interest), or just that most millennials despise suburbia and flocking to more Manhattanese-areas (thus inflating already high real estate prices). Or maybe it's just that the product 'mortgage' has lost its appeal in general (who want's to lock himself up for 30+ yrs, practicing the opposite of diversification).
In any of those cases it would mean, you would free up a large share of your income for consumption.
Could well be the case. I remember when the media suddenly discovered yuppies ca. 1981, and the Washington City Paper ran an article about the "cookie people", people who would line up to buy expensive chocolate chip cookies at trendy stores.
Maybe internationally, but 'avocado toast vs home ownership' started in Australia and has been a meme since Oct last year long before anyone know who Time Gurner was.
I don't think I've ever seen an avocado in person. I was shocked to discover my apparent obsession with something I've never experienced was why I couldn't afford a house.
As someone who has seen, and regularly consumes avocados for no more than about $2.50 per fruit, I too am a bit confused about what relationship this has with my inability to afford a $250,000 deposit on a Sydney 1 bedroom apartment.
I'm more having a quiet giggle about what appears (from here in Australia) to be a rather noticeable wave of media coverage and memes from the US regarding "Smashed avo on toast"!
My girlfriend will violently disagree with me, but I think avocados are a bit ick really, and yet affording an actual _house_ anywhere near where work is is basically an impossible dream for nearly everyone I know... and my being able to afford one has nothing to do with my breakfast habits (or frankly, the fact I skip breakfast everyday)
Don't smash the avocado. Cut it up in slices and put it in a toasted baguette. Add sliced cherry tomatoes (yellow ones are best), salt, olive oil, and onions. Maybe some cheese of your choice (provolone or feta) too if you would like, though not necessary. Delicious.
My girlfriend say she loves your thinking, and she thinks feta is the best choice! I might have to have a go at this again, but I've always found the texture just so... odd!
The smashed avo thing is really just saying that buying your breakfast each workday at $10/pop is another $2.5k/year extra you could save for a deposit. That something that seems so inconsequential does actually add up a little bit. It's not saying "1 avocado = 1 house", as all the recent histrionics seem to have assumed it to be.
This kind of petulance is why millenials have the rep they do. 2.5k would be in addition to what else is being saved, obviously. Only the most rampant idiots genuinely think the original statement meant that you could buy a house solely on breakfast money.
Right, and look I completely get that line of thinking; but pretending that it's solely down to not "saving" enough when the price-to-income ratio is so skewed in this country, with basically zero wage growth for most industries especially those that young people go into seems a little disingenuous.
Look, I'm a senior software engineer earning an excellent salary, and at the end of the day I can afford property if I wanted to, but the sheer amount of debt required for it in 2017, coupled with the ratio above, and the honest-to-god feeling that the young are being plundered in service of the older (I'm not saying that's actually the case, but that is certain how it can feel. See the last two budgets for why), and then being told to "buck up and save more"... you can understand why it feels kind of bullshit, right?
Conversely, the young have always been plundered for the old. The old have always held the political reins. This is the bit that millenials are missing. The Xers before them were plundered and misunderstood by the old. The boomers before them were plundered and misunderstood by the old. It's not new, and the millenials aren't experiencing something that hasn't happened before. As a very simple, short example: when have post-boomers in Australia ever experience conscription? We've been involved in a few wars, but the last conscription was of the boomers, in the Vietnam war.
Yes, housing affordability is terrible in this country at the moment. But if you could choose between being a young boomer (with no foreknowledge) and being a young millenial, you'd be insane to choose the former. Especially if you're a woman or a minority. My mother was born in mid-1946 (a literal post-war boomer) and was a teacher in the 1970s, and was legally paid 2/3rds of what male teachers earned, simple because of her extra X chromosome. This is the kind of thing that never gets mentioned when millenials are bitching about how much worse they have it now; they never mention all the advances that have happened in the interim. However boomers have been through that. They know what it was like before. And that's why they grumble about millenials. Is it fair? Probably not, but neither is the millenial picture of boomers.
If you can only save $2.5k a year, and you're spending that instead on breakfast rather than other things, then you clearly don't have the will to save even if you earned a lot more.
Are you aware that 'being poor' existed before the modern era? And that it's normal for young adults to have a below average wage? And that while the percentage of people renting has increased a little recently, it's not that much higher than 70 years ago?
It's intergenerational cultural cringe. First it was Chardonnay socialists, then caffè latte drinkers, now it's war on avocado on toasted bread.
But one might ask why avocado prices have soared from five years ago - I buy a bag of six smallish ones from Aldi these days for $6.70.
Millenials on average spend the smallest portion of their income on eating out of any generation since WW2 did at the same age, but sure a few overpriced cafes are why people can't afford to buy houses.
> $250,000 deposit on a Sydney 1 bedroom apartment.
Median house price in Sydney is 1.1M. Generally you need to put down a 10% deposit in AU. Just how fancy is this $2.5M 1-bedroom apartment you're looking to buy, that it's worth twice a median house?
Houses here are ridiculously expensive, yes, but let's keep it real.
Can I ask where you live? In the Americas avocado is fairly ubiquitous and for good reason: it's a relatively unique fruit that's high in fat, very flavorful, works on its own or as a condiment.
My advice is - if you've never seen one in person count your blessings. I could easily spend $200/month on avocados alone.
"Need" is a strong word; I don't "need" to eat any one particular food. But I'm sure that between salads, Mexican food, sandwiches, and whatever else sounds good at the time, I eat at least that many.
Wife hates 'em. Son hates 'em. I picked up a taste for them in college. Tried avocado toast once though; blech.
Remember, "exotic" depends on where you live. If you watch Iron Chef, the original one from Japan, you'll see whenever they have a dish with avocado, the guest judges always proclaim "Avocado! How Exotic!"
Even within the US the availability varies widely.
I doubt the grocery stores carry many around here if they do at all. They probably blend in with all the other greens. I'll check for them next time I'm at the store.
I don't even bother with the toast, just eat it with the spoon from the shell. Is that weird? I am sure I am not the only one.
The reason I like them so much, is they remind me when I used to climb walnut trees to get green walnuts. The avocado somehow tastes like that white unripened walnut meat.
In France we cut it in half, remove the pit, and in each half put a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar (2 olive oil : 1 balsamic vinegar ratio) in the hole where the pit used to be, and simply eat it with a spoon, it's delicious. The better the avocado and the better the balsamic vinegar, the better the final result :)
Every time I don't buy avocado toast, I buy something else to eat. I don't see how avoiding it helps to save money?
And, that stupid picture. For $8, I get TWO slices, each a LARGE piece of (organic whole-wheat) bread, with additional veggies and a nut spread, from some upscale vegan place in downtown Boston no less. If you're getting a tiny slice of Wonderbread with half an avocado on it like the article's picture suggests, of course you're getting ripped off.
The original tweet that started the whole avocado thing was arguing that millenials should be eating a $2-4 avocado at home rather than paying $14 for it at a cafe.
Of course, if you share a tiny apartment that's probably not such a pleasant way to catch up with your friends, but what does he care, he's already got a house.
If the argument was "millenials eat out too much", that they are spending $8/meal×3 meals/day×365 days/year = $8760/year eating out, it would be an interesting article.
But the article is entirely about "avocado toast", a meal that, while popular, is not eaten more than once per week even by any millenial I know. Saving $8/meal×1 meal/week×52 weeks/year = $416/year is so laughably far from helping save for the down payment of a home, especially in a market where avocado toast is popular, like Boston, where it would take 100 years.
The article is vapid. It could be summed up as "get off my lawn" but because the author of this content-free piece is somehow employed by the New Yorker, he found it necessary to wrap it in a dozen paragraphs of purple prose.
I created something called "Dinosaur Eggs" in NYC that at least one restauranter has told me he "stole" and now features in his spot in vegas.
Halved avacdo; remove the seed; fill the hole with things of your choosing.. I like nutritional yeast, chia seeds, olive oil, sea salt, habenero sauce.
I've also done blueberries, other seeds, sprouts. All delicious.
To all the people who keep saying things like "I don't eat avocado toast but I can't afford to buy a house either. Counter example! QED LOL", you're missing the point. It's not about avocado toast obviously. The point is that millennials spend money on frivolous luxuries and then complain that they can't afford anything. He was using avocado toast as an example. Duh.
I think that people use that as a joke response because the reality is so much sadder: even if we don't buy frivolous items (sidenote, millennials do buy less, and it's killing restaurants, which of course, we get blamed for without a hint of irony) Then we still won't be able to afford houses.
Think about how harsh that is, even if we live a life of austerity, income inequality is still so vast that we still won't be able to live a better life later. And the cherry on top is that despite living a life of relative austerity, a ridiculously rich person accuses us of frivolous spending.
> The point is that millennials spend money on frivolous luxuries and then complain that they can't afford anything.
They seem to be spending less (percentage wise) than the previous generation[1]. I can understand why some people would be upset if they were told, "Even though you're spending less than I did on luxuries, you're still spending too much." Particularly when they are told that getting a sandwich for lunch is a luxury they can't afford.
Who says the previous generation spent the "correct" amount? Where in the contract that we all signed when we became adults did it say "The cosmos shall ensure that no generation should ever have to spend less than the previous generation on anything"?
What are you talking about? Spending $8 on a beer is a luxury. If you spend an extra $6 on a drink to have a man pour it for you, you can't complain about being poor. I'm sorry.
He's making it seem like saving $50 a week to end up with $33K is some kind of impractical absurdity. $33K is a long way towards a down payment on a house in most of the country. AND THAT'S JUST HIS AVOCADO TOAST BUDGET! Cut out the $8 beers and $4 lattes from Starbucks, get married and combine your wealth with your new wife and guess what, you can afford a house. In the SF Bay Area? No, probably not. But believe it or not, there is a world outside the 64 square miles of SF.
"So far this decade, the U.S. stock market is ahead once again. And for the past 40 years, it would have earned you almost 4 times as much as U.S. residential real estate."
People for whom $33k is a long way towards a down payment are not spending $8 on a beer and people who spend $8 on a beer do not live somewhere that $33k is a long way towards a down payment.
Huh? If you want to buy a million dollar condo in SF when you hit 30, the down payment would be 200K. If you and your your spouse save an extra $50 a week then you'll have $66K. That's one-third of the down payment you need using the numbers from the tweet which only represent avocado toast expenditures. Save another $50/wk by not going to bars (1 person can easily spend $50 on alcohol in a night out). Save another $50/wk by not going to starbucks. Save another $50/wk by not going into extreme student loan debt which is totally avoidable. Save another $50/wk by not leasing an Audi A4 because it's always been your dream car therefore you should have one when you're 22. Save another...
The point is, you can save a lot of money by making smart choices instead of blaming baby boomers.
Great, so all you need is a high-earning job starting at 20, that you got without going into student loan debt ($50/week is the payment on like $15,000 of student loans which is practically nothing, so you are essentially suggesting not going to college or getting your parents to pay for most of it or being extremely brilliant and managing to get some really great scholarships or getting into one of the few extremely exclusive schools that cover most of the cost for people from families of modest means) and a spouse that also managed to accomplish all of that who you managed to meet and form a relationship with without doing any of the most common social activities that people do to enable them to meet people and form relationships. And then either choose to not have children or have an income high enough to cover both your outrageous SF daycare costs and your $800k mortgage at the same time. And of course, hope that the condo is still only $1 million ten years from now. All of that sounds eminently achievable for a typical person and like a sustainable to run a society /s.
I'm not complaining out of personal bitterness. I live somewhere somewhat less expensive than SF and have been relatively lucky on most of those points and have lived frugally and so am fairly well on track to be able to buy something by my early thirties. However, this is not a sustainable way to run a society. When even people who are among the luckiest and most privileged 20% of people have to scrimp and save to get something basic like a 1000 sq ft condo and the other 80% has no hope at all of ever getting that, something is seriously wrong.
Well I meant e.g. "only have 30K of student loan debt instead of $45K". And yeah all that stuff is possible. It's called life and it's not supposed to be easy. Sorry.
And yeah if you can't earn enough then you should move. It's not a big deal. Sorry that money is a thing and that real estate has varying prices in different geographics areas causing you to have to make this decision. So sorry.
We are living in the richest and most technologically advanced civilization ever to have existed. Life is supposed to be easy.
The failure to ensure that basic needs like housing are available at prices that are affordable to average people is a clear and unforgivable failure by policy makers.
> We are living in the richest and most technologically advanced civilization ever to have existed.
That's always true at any given moment in time. 100 years ago, someone was living in the most technologically advanced civilization but they still had to budget. We're not in star trek the next generation yet.
We managed to have affordable housing 50 years ago with vastly less wealth and vastly inferior technology. We should be able to manage it now. The fact that we don't is purely due to the utter failure of our politicians to manage housing policy in a way that benefits the average citizen.
And given that this is a democracy, yes, we are entitled to have a government that operates for our benefit. That is not too much to ask.
> The point is that millennials spend money on frivolous luxuries and then complain that they can't afford anything.
This may be true, but it is not why they can't afford housing. It is a red herring, that you seem to have fallen for. It ignores the fact of how expensive housing in some areas has become.
To be fair, buying coffees and lunch really does start to add up if the alternative is that it's sitting in an index fund. $20 every day for a year for ten years is around 114k at 8% interest. That is a down payment on a house in most areas.
8% is pretty high. Look at the 10 year return rates for these portfolios[1]; the best is 6.96%, with the median being 4.89%. These involve a certain amount of risk; if you want something guaranteed, you're looking at about 2-2.3% return for CDs.
Likewise, assuming that people spend $20 a day on avocado toast is a bit extreme. A sandwich with avocado in it shouldn't set you back more than $6-8 in most places. And it's not like you have the choice to not eat at all, so compared to a $2-3 dollar super-cheap lunch (either cheaply made and brought from home or a couple dollar menu items at McDonald's) you're only paying an additional $3-6 dollars.
Let's be fairly generous with these numbers and say $10 a day, with a return of 5%. That's a return of $47,203 after 10 years. But after factoring in inflation, it's $39,104 (actually less when you factor in taxes). Use more realistic numbers ($6 a day, 4.89% return) and you get $23,323 (not figuring in taxes).
Far too many people are now "completely under-privileged" and will end up poor despite their efforts.
But even beyond that, humanity progresses. So many new technologies and increased efficiencies have come about in recent years. Why then, do we see the opposite effect on lay people? So many people today cannot find work or aren't being paid enough to live on even to the standards of 20 years ago. This isn't whining, this is recognising inequity.
I eat avocado toast and I've never even seen that shit on a menu. I discovered it on my own. Somehow this 'phenomenon' is still news. Not everything has to be a 'thing'.
Where are you from? 'Avocado toast' is an Australian 'meme' that has its origins of long before that Tim Gurner's 60 Minutes interview[1]. 'Avocado toast' (where toast is probably sourdough) is a staple on Australian cafe menus.
Also worth understanding is that Australian cafe culture is a bit different to the US and if you don't have or understand that, then I could understand how you struggle.
> “If avocado toast costs around $8 a serving, you’d have to skip approximately 4,900 of those beloved toasts to afford that new home.”
Remember that journalists make an average salary of $37,720(according to a quick Google search). You're not going to get a lot of advice or insight into handling your money from someone who can barely afford his rent. I don't think his goal was to give advice(I'm not really sure what the article's point was, to be honest), but I suggest avoiding taking advice from journalists nonetheless.
To a first approximation, cutting a habit of $8/day for 200 days/year would immediately raise your net worth by ~$20,000 in my eyes. You can't pay your down payment in net worth, but nonetheless you could easily buy a $180,000 property with just that change alone after 4 years.
The original comment was made by an Australian, who was essentially saying "young Australians are not frugal enough to buy property", despite real house prices growing much faster than inflation or wages and spending by young people on dining out/entertainment being lower than past generations. It's actually a reference to this [1] tongue-in-cheek article which, while obviously a joke, touched a nerve amongst young people in a city where the median house price is 1.1M AUD/850USD. Also, other issues with your maths aside, $180,000 properties don't exist in Australia in places with employment opportunities.
>To a first approximation, cutting a habit of $8/day for 200 days/year would immediately raise your net worth by ~$20,000 in my eyes. You can't pay your down payment in net worth, but nonetheless you could easily buy a $180,000 property with just that change alone after 4 years.
What? What does that even mean? $8 a day for 200 days/year would be $1,600 a year. That's basically nothing. $6,400 is not a down payment on $180,000.
> nonetheless you could easily buy a $180,000 property with just that change alone after 4 years.
Sure. Now consider this, avo toast for $8 is more of a brunch thing than an everyday thing. 2 servings per week tops. $832 savings per year, takes 216 years to save up for a $180,000 home.
Also 1-bedroom apartments in the places where avotoast is $8 cost more around $800k.
Yea, but that neatly skates past the point that a billionaire is critiquing tens of millions of americans (more than a hundred million? Certainly close.) spending habits based on a menu item. This is a clear case of lazy criticism without much substance.
Kids, don't buy $8 avacado and toast if you want to use that money later. There, I said something just as useful without writing off a substantial portion of the population as being bad with money.
