Extremely Rich Guy: Avocado Toast Is Why You Broke Millennials Can't Afford Homes

In a statement at which I stared for eight straight minutes trying to convince myself that it is a brilliant bit of satire lampooning the Blame Millennials for Their Problems Internet instead of the world's hottest, dumbest superfood-related take, an Australian real estate magnate has deduced the real reason that young people today are finding themselves increasingly unable to buy homes: avocado consumption. From an Australian news program that is, confusingly, also titled 60 Minutes:

Tim Gurner, 35, who has almost half a billion dollars to his name, told 60 Minutes that people wanting to get into the Australian property market simply need to reel in their unrealistic expectations and start saving.

"When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each," he said.

"We're at a point now where the expectations of younger people are very, very high. They want to eat out every day, they want travel to Europe every year. The people that own homes today worked very, very hard for it (and) saved every dollar, did everything they could to get up the property investment ladder."

In a peculiar twist, Gurner is not the only semi-relevant Australian to recently link generational trends in economic behavior to novelty brunch meal consumption. Back in October, one Bernard Salt—that's the real name of person, by the way, and not a line of French Alps-themed luxury bath products—finished a Dave Barry-esque riff on "hipster cafes" by observing as follows:

I have seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more. I can afford to eat this for lunch because I am middle-aged and have raised my family. But how can young people afford to eat like this? Shouldn't they be economising by eating at home? How often are they eating out? Twenty-two dollars several times a week could go towards a deposit on a house.

First of all, yes, it's hilarious that Salt pointed out a significant flaw in his own assertion—"I have seen at least one person do this thing at least one time, and I know it would not be sustainable for them to do it regularly, but I admittedly have no idea how often this actually occurs"—and then arrived at the end of the paragraph, shrugged, and decided to plunge ahead so fearlessly. Second, Gurner needs to share some brunch restaurant recommendations with Salt as soon as possible, since Salt, in what has now been exposed as a humiliating admission, is apparently wildly overpaying for his (daily?) avocado toast fix.

The modern housing market is a dangerous, uncertain place for millennials, who are simultaneously grappling with things like the staggering costs of higher education and six-figure student debt figures hanging over our heads; the near-superfluousness of the four-year college degree that used to functionally guarantee a reasonably comfortable adult life; fierce competition for scarce real estate in the major metropolitan areas in which the most desirable jobs are located; hordes of faceless foreign investors that snap up property and pay with cash, cleanly boxing out millennials attempting to finance the transaction; delays in marriage that make young two-income households increasingly scarce; a fluid job market that makes it risky for members of an increasingly mobile workforce to make such a significant long-term investment; nimbyist city governments reluctant to permit the construction of badly-needed starter homes; skyrocketing rents that make it difficult for young people to accumulate the savings necessary to make a down payment; the residual effects on our career trajectories of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; and, of course, the residual psychological effects associated with watching millions of Americans, including people we love, cruelly rendered destitute in the housing bubble's aftermath.

But yeah. Avocados, though.