This morning Fred Wilson linked to a Bloomberg article on his blog called, Maybe This Global Slowdown Is Different. There are a bunch of great charts throughout the piece and I’d like to share 3 of them here.

The first chart shows how per capita energy consumption has dropped remarkably in the United States since the 1990s, but how, not surprisingly, China’s rate is increasing.

The second chart shows car sales in the US. There was a big drop off during The Great Recession, and though sales have rebounded, they still haven’t reached their late 1990s peak. But that’s not to say that they won’t.

And the third chart shows the tremendous shift in the US over the last 65 years from the consumption of stuff to services.

This last one is fascinating. And it ties into the argument that the way value is created in our economy has shifted dramatically.

But I wonder if this change is really as sharp as it seems. 

If you look at what makes up “services”, you’ll see that housing (and utilities) and healthcare make up over 50% of what is considered to be personal spending on services. And if you look at housing and utilities spending since the 1960s in the US, it has increased dramatically. 

So how much of this shift from stuff-to-services is actually being driven by housing?