These trends are a major threat to our economy. We already know the downward pressure they're putting on consumer consumption, but the millennial aversion to marriage in particular is posing a serious new threat to Social Security and other sacred entitlement programs.
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We're given lots of reasons for the financial disadvantages the millennials face compared to previous generation. We're told they were economically and emotionally wounded by the Great Recession. We're told outsourcing and job consolidation trends have left them out. We're most often told that crushing student loans have kept them out of the investment and home-buying game. We're even told millennials aren't getting married because they are so economically stretched and stressed.
All those complaints and excuses, including the marriage issue, were well summarized in this column by the Washington Post's Catherine Rampell, where Rempell cites numerous polls insisting that millennials want to engage in all the social and economic trappings of adulthood, but just can't afford it.
But that column is filled with the kind of self-pity that actually acts as damning evidence of their culpability in their self-destruction.
Because the funny thing about taking a risk is that you have to just do it.
Read MoreThat millennial you're working with may be a jerk
Everything from marriage, to home buying, to starting a business can be scary, and there are always a million arguments against taking the plunge. That's true in good economic times and bad.
I remember making some of these arguments explaining why I wasn't married back when I was in my mid-20's. I talked a lot about how I needed to get paid more before I could even consider settling down, and how the economic cards were stacked against me in my profession. I even insisted, (wrongly), that all my friends who were married were getting extra financial help from their parents.
But the TRUTH was that I was just too afraid and not really ready, In other words, I'm not saying kids today are different. I'm saying I was just like them.
Like me in 1996, what millennials really fear is commitment itself.
Read MoreWhy women should say 'No!' more often
If millennials really want to get married, they get married. The marriages may not last but that's been true since Samson and Delilah.
If millennials really want to buy a house, they'll buy a house. Maybe it'll be a fixer-upper and they'll have to eat tuna sandwiches for dinner for 3 years, but they'll do it.
If millennials really want a higher paying job, they'll make the sacrifices necessary and make it happen.
The millennials who aren't doing these things, may want to get married, mortgaged, and better-compensated … but not as much as they want to remain comfortable or safe in their careers or social life.