When I graduated from college, I returned back home for a few months until I had  saved enough money for a deposit for an apartment in Queens. My Italian mother fought me. She thought I was insane for wasting money on rent, when there was a perfectly good bed upstairs and a proper meal on a plate every night. But I went. That’s what we all did in the 1980s.

The Atlantic and Vox have written many articles in the past year about the changing spending habits and preferences of millenials. They say that millenials want to move to urban areas and not spend money on cars, like I did, back in the Stone Ages. Highly ambitious, creative people have always flocked to cities. Until now.

I actually think those writers are dead wrong. Young people have been priced out of the major cities,  like New York, D.C., and Boston. There are staying in older cities, like Cleveland, where the rent is dirt cheap, and they get a hand-me-down car from Uncle George. Or they are sticking around here in the suburbs. I went to a Brooklyn-ish wine bar on Saturday in a working class suburb on Saturday. The tattooed waiters and the bartender were in their 20s.

And they were making good money. The restaurant was packed. I Facebooked my meal, and the bartender rewarded me with an extra huge glass of wine.

Millenials are growing up in a crappy economy. They are cheap, like my son, Jonah. Unless they are writers for Vox or the Atlantic, they are going to steer clear of the larger cities. I think we’re going to see increased decentralization in the next twenty years.