Downward Mobility A Modern Economic Reality : NPR

I suppose this is related to the recent series of posts I have put up on economic issues, but recently NPR ran this interesting interview on Downward Mobility:

Downward Mobility A Modern Economic Reality : NPR

This is, undoubtedly, both real, and scary. But what struck me to some degree, and the reason I'm posting it here, is that it somewhat taps into the phenomenon of rising economic expectations  of the last 30 or so years.  I don't know if this is good or bad, but it simply is the case.

By this, one of the things I noted on this interview is that part of the "downward mobility" adjustments some of these people expressed is that they'll not be able to roll their houses over as soon as they like, and buy bigger ones.  There's simply a built in expectation that they'd do that, and frankly a lot of people do have that built in expectation.

People have been doing that for decades, so that's nothing new, but there was up until relatively recently much less of an expectation that a person could do that.  My parents never did.  They bought their house in 1958, after they'd been married a short while, and my mother still owns the same house.  Plenty of families of that generation moved once, as their family's grew, but they moved because their families grew, more often than not.  Some people did buy a different house in later years, but many did not.  A person I worked with for many years related to me that when first married he lived in his parents house, which he shortly thereafter inherited, and would have lived at that location thereafter, but his wife did not want to. They had a house built, where both of them lived until they passed on.  The idea of buying another house just because seems much more common now.  Or perhaps the ability to do that is much more common.

Another thing I noted is that there's a certain level of economic expectation that would seem to be unrealistic with some of the occupations noted in the interview. This is scary, as its becoming increasingly common all over, but its a bit surprising that some people had high economic expectations associated with certain occupations to start with .  I recently noted the same last year during the Occupy Wall Street protests when one protester was holding up something with noting a high student loan debt, with the caption noting that the person was an art major.  Majoring in art is fine, but expecting to be able to pay off a student loan of any substantial size with that degree is nearly delusional.

Of course, there was a time when nearly any college degree did in fact mean that a person was guaranteed business employment, if they wanted it, but that day is long over.  College degrees are much more common now, and while they're not worthless by any means, they do not have the automatic value they once did.  Some of course retain real clout, in terms of economic expectations, but many do not.  Even traditional standbys in these regards, like the JD, no longer is a guarantee of that at all, as many recent law school grads in many parts of the country haven't been able to find work at all.  All part of the same story, I suppose.