It's 1am. I really should be asleep, sore and exhausted after a long day of packing up our pathetic worldly belongings. Well, I was in bed, but then I made the mistake of reading my twitterfeed on the iPad before I turned out the lights. I came across an article about stupid teachers who use restraints on autistic children, which lead to flashbacks about much smaller injustices done on my children. I gave up on sleep and came into the office to catch up on the reading that I've missed over the past week.
I read David Brooks' touching opinion piece about the unsung heros working abroad. But altruism doesn't have to mean a plane ticket to Kenya or Korea. There's commonplace altuism and heroics even here in a boring New Jersey suburb, if you know where to look. There's the group of senior citizens running a food bank, or the mom working full time to support her five children.
I'm rather stunned that moving this time is so much harder than it was seven years ago. I didn't think that we had amassed that much more stuff, but we had. Kids' clothes in bins marked by age, books by bushel, lecture notes, beach shovels from Point Pleasant, dishes from aunties. There's also all the paperwork required for changing schools, and repairs demands from the inspectors.
I never wanted to be this person. This person weighed down by stuff, who needs weeks to go some place else. I always wanted to be that James Spader character in Sex, Lies, and Videotape who has one key and can put all his possessions in the trunk of car. But here I am. Ha.
But then we're lucky that we can move at all, as everyone reminds me. "You sold your house?," people continually ask. "In this market?" It's extremely hard to find people with enough money to buy that starter home in the starter community, because that's the group that has been hurt the most.
Yes, we're really lucky. We're also really lucky, because we can move.
Probably 3/4 of my town bought their home when it was worth a fraction of its current price. This would seem like a good thing. They would make a nice profit if they sold today. But their salaries have not risen much at all. Some don't even have a job anymore. So, if they sold their house, they wouldn't have any place to go. What percentage of Americans would be homeowners, if they had to buy for the first time today?
Steve's been talking about the Atlantic article on the middle class all week.
It’s hard to miss just how unevenly the Great Recession has affected different classes of people in different places. From 2009 to 2010, wages were essentially flat nationwide—but they grew by 11.9 percent in Manhattan and 8.7 percent in Silicon Valley. In the Washington, D.C., and San Jose (Silicon Valley) metro areas—both primary habitats for America’s meritocratic winners—job postings in February of this year were almost as numerous as job candidates. In Miami and Detroit, by contrast, for every job posting, six people were unemployed. In March, the national unemployment rate was 12 percent for people with only a high-school diploma, 4.5 percent for college grads, and 2 percent for those with a professional degree.
Apt. 11d 
I purged half the house over the summer. It was mind-boggling to me how much we acquired since we last moved into this house less than 4 years ago.
It’s amazing you sold your house. So many people I know own two houses right now. Good luck with the packing!
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“So, if they sold their house, they wouldn’t have any place to go.”
It’s different elsewhere in the country. In the most bubble-hit areas, the temptation is to buy a much cheaper second home, default on the underwater first home and live happily ever after with the smaller mortgage. The first and second home may be practically identical in all but size of mortgage, which is why this maneuver is so tempting. Who wants to be the last guy on the block sweating to pay a $400k mortgage on a (now) $200k house?
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Jim the Realtor has a post up with some charts showing 1) that we are almost out of the woods with regard to resetting adjustable rate mortgages and 2) that the total number of distressed mortgages is slowly trending down.
http://www.bubbleinfo.com/2011/08/18/slight-improvement-in-shadow/
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In March, the national unemployment rate was 12 percent for people with only a high-school diploma…
I keep expecting to see some kind of push toward protectionism, but it hasn’t happened much yet.
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It amazes me that people do not see how the last 20 or so years have been a war on the middle class. The middle class was created because government stepped in and reigned in the power of the rich and, essentially, redistributed the power via unions and other government programs. And yet when people ooh and aah over the good old days, they *think* that it all happened without government intervention. It’s just astounding how wrong the erstwhile middle class is, how they’ve been snookered into believing the exact opposite of what really happened. And it’s sad.
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“It amazes me that people do not see how the last 20 or so years have been a war on the middle class.”
In related news, here’s an article entitled “Why Amazon Can’t Make a Kindle in the US.” The manufacturing expertise just doesn’t exist here, apparently, and that’s true for a vast array of products.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/08/17/why-amazon-cant-make-a-kindle-in-the-usa/
“The middle class was created because government stepped in and reigned in the power of the rich and, essentially, redistributed the power via unions and other government programs.”
Even if that was true then, it won’t work now if there isn’t a lot to distribute. The first condition for the appearance a middle class is tremendous productivity. If we were all scratching out little gardens in our backyards as our means of subsistence, there would be no middle class, no matter how hard the government worked at redistribution.
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Wendy, Amen.
We have friends that were renting a house that was foreclosed. The bank offered them “cash for keys” to be out in 48 hours. I know I would miss that cash. There is no way I could have my house packed up in 2 days. A week maybe. I can’t believe all the stuff we’ve got, and I’ve been really good about giving stuff away. We keep no clothes that don’t fit someone in the house. Books are down to about 5 shelves. Sentimental (stuff from parents, etc.) is probably down to 10 boxes. Yet we still have mountains of things.
I swear it will be different in a decade when the last child graduates.
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We keep no clothes that don’t fit someone in the house.
I so, so, so wish that were the case at my house. If anybody knows of a way to start a fire that burns the contents of the closets without damaging anything else in the house, let me know.
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Amy, businesses are sitting on billions in cash reserves but won’t increase productivity/create jobs because there is no demand. What having a middle class does is increase demand. Unfortunately, what it means is that there will be some level of people taking advantage of government programs, but the end result is a massive benefit for society if people are able to buy things.
Like I’ve said before (though I’ve adjusted my analogy to make sense to my right-wing BIL who works for a Mercedes shop: It’s way better for 6 people to own 6 Mercedes than it is for 1 person to own 6 Mercedes. The 6 people with 6 Mercedes will be more likely to use them, thus rendering them in need of repairs and parts (which my BIL’s business provides). But if 1 person has 6 Mercedes, those cars are going to need repairs and parts a lot less often.
I read that article on Amazon and the Kindle last night, and I was interested in the alternatives to “traditional” management practices the article discussed. The emphasis on cost-cutting has been short sighted and not very beneficial to the economy, though it’s right in line with what “traditional” management practices recommend.
I was also interested in the concept of “throughput” accounting. Maybe in my next life I’ll be a management consultant. I was never into it because I hate things like 1. human resources (i.e., firing people) and 2. making more money than I need. But I do like the idea of, for lack of a better world, sustainable management–management that is based on the idea of sustaining a community. One of the books that had a profound effect on me in college was Janet Fitchen’s “Poverty in Rural America,” which described so well communities I was very familiar with. When I was back in upstate NY last week, I was thinking a lot about what it would take to revitalize these communities. I wish I could make it happen.
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MH, skunk?
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Wendy, I’d like to be able to live in the house still.
The 6 people with 6 Mercedes will be more likely to use them…
Causing global warming. I kind of wish they would make the bus suck about 20% less.
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I agree completely that government intervention (and union support) were vital in the stability of America’s middle class. The bigger picture I saw was that government and unions and the commitments they demanded forced employers and employees to share the short term risk (well, and to force employers to shoulder more of it — which did decrease efficiency). We’re moving towards a world where employers aren’t being required to (and might not be able to) shoulder the short term risk in return for long term goals, including a stable work force.
The problem with the solutions of the mid century, though, is the effects of globalization of the workforce and the advances in other countries. I do not believe we’re going to solve those issues by putting up trade barriers. I’m counting on freedom to mitigate the effects of exploitation (of the workforce and the environment) in other countries (freedom as in anti-corruption commissions in India, the Arab spring, and, eventually, some breakdown of the controls in China). But, in the end, the re-distributed wealth will be more equally distributed about the globe, which in turn, does mean that the middle class here can’t be stabilized at the expense of the middle class elsewhere around the world (which was part of the solution in the 50’s).
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In honor of Laura’s stuff angst, I’m going to throw away all our old coloring books. My kids never used them and I am giving up my fantasy that my kids will quietly color — like my sisters and I did.
Getting rid of all the clothes that don’t fit isn’t going to happen, but maybe I can get rid of all *my* clothes that don’t fit.
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but maybe I can get rid of all *my* clothes that don’t fit.
Wife: But these sweaters still fit.
Me (not outloud): Great, if we need to provide sweaters for all the female extras in a movie about 1986, I’ll be sorry I ever asked you why I’ve had to carry them into and out of three different houses since the last time they were worn.
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MH, twice a year everyone tries on all their clothes. If it doesn’t fit or you don’t like it, it goes to St. Vincent or friends. I can do this now because all three of my girls (13, 17, 19) are pretty much adult sized so there are no clothes to store for the next sibling- they are all the same size. My son is the only boy so I have no sibling clothes to store for him on either end. That said, we still have way too many clothes.
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“Amy, businesses are sitting on billions in cash reserves but won’t increase productivity/create jobs because there is no demand.”
We are probably headed into a double dip recession. Keeping lots of cash handy
1) means that you don’t have to do demoralizing mass firings of employees you’ll need back in better times
2) means that you can buy out your competitors who are short on cash, buy land cheap or take advantage of other opportunities as they arise
3) means that your company will survive.
Survival is good. If more big Wall Street firms had focused more on keeping big cash reserves, they might still be around today. It just boggles my mind that anybody would think that large cash reserves are bad. They’re good for an individual family and they’re good for businesses and they’re good for the economy as a whole. Having substantial emergency funds turns potential cascading catastrophes into just a bump in the road.
“What having a middle class does is increase demand.”
Why the heck do we want to increase demand? I think that traditional Keynesianism contradicts contemporary liberal pieties on the subject of consumption and sustainability. The two systems mesh very poorly, and yet nobody seems to notice that.
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“Wife: But these sweaters still fit.
Me (not outloud): Great, if we need to provide sweaters for all the female extras in a movie about 1986, I’ll be sorry I ever asked you why I’ve had to carry them into and out of three different houses since the last time they were worn.”
May I suggest working up a heart-rending speech about the shivering residents of women’s shelter and how much those sweaters could mean to somebody who didn’t have one?
(Let’s ignore for a moment that if they go to a thrift shop, the sweaters are more likely destined for somebody’s 1980s or Cosby-themed party.)
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“Why the heck do we want to increase demand?”
See the above re the Mercedes analogy. I’m not saying we want to give everyone 6 Mercedes they’re not going to use. But there are millions of people without things and services they need but who have no means of paying for it. Food. Clothing. Shelter. The many costs of maintenance of those things. Health care.
I really also think you missed the whole point of that Amazon/Kindle article! Or, possibly, I did and it’s really about how corporate fascism should reign triumphant. I just saw other lessons.
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We can demand stuff as long it is boring? Democrat-Santa brings socks and underwear.
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Thinking about a couple of threads back, it is obvious that PT must be responsible for a huge amount of economic activity even compared to other high earners. Obviously, the government can’t go make more like her, but having a bi-monthly national happy hour couldn’t help but move things in that direction.
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“We can demand stuff as long it is boring? Democrat-Santa brings socks and underwear.”
Well, it brings new meaning to the term “trickle-down economy.”
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I thought the beginning of the Kindle article (where they lay out the problem) was factual and then the solutions segment got pretty pie-in-the-sky, so I didn’t read it carefully.
“But there are millions of people without things and services they need but who have no means of paying for it. Food. Clothing. Shelter. The many costs of maintenance of those things. Health care.”
So, why in blazes have we been trying to artificially support home prices for the past four years? And why do we still pay farmers not to farm? And why are we growing vast amounts of food to burn as fuel? (Clothing I think is not a big issue–Walmart has that under control. Plus there’s an overhang of old stuff–it sounds like MH’s wife alone could dress a small Vermont village.) Housing in particular is such a huge chunk of average monthly expenses that we ought to be cheering when home prices and housing expenses go down, not trying to jerry-rig artificially high prices. If US housing costs are significantly reduced, US workers can be more competitive on the world market without sacrificing quality of life.
By the way, I’ve recently noticed a troubling trend where prominent liberal pundits seem to be calling for inflation as some sort of economic cure-all. I’m not exactly sure what the theory is (although I suspect they want to goad corporations into spending their cash reserves), but given our circumstances, this has the makings of disaster if they have the ear of the administration. It is entirely possible to have a stagnant economy and inflation at the same time.
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I don’t usually read The Atlantic, since it seems silly to pay money for the privilege of reading unsubstantiated recapitulations of the conventional wisdom, but we were traveling a lot this weekend, so I did. I must say, I thought that was an uncommonly (even for The Atlantic) fatuous article: the author’s prime prescription for helping the middle class is raising their taxes.
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I think we just had an earthquake.
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MH, we felt it in Providence. Check Twitter–it’s a crazed WTF session there.
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I’ve never been in a quake before. People left the build after a brief conference in the hall, possibly because it is a very nice day anyway, and then they made us go back to work.
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Actually, Americans can’t afford to shop at Walmart anymore. In fact, dollar stores are starting to lose money because customers are finding THEM too expensive. We’re losing our middle class, but most Americans don’t ever leave the country to realize how crappy they have it in comparison to any other industrialized nation (and now increasingly developing nations). Europeans who come to the US are shocked by our crumbling and dingy infrastructure and general low quality of goods and services we put with. Even people from developing countries are surprised by the lack of difference between the US and home.
I’m currently living in what would probably be a lower middle class neighborhood in Beijing, and honestly the standard of living is higher than it is in a lot of lower middle class neighborhoods in the US. Housing is more cramped and there is a dusty gritty feeling that most of the US doesn’t have (though the roads and sidewalks are brand spanking new, unlike in Chicago where you need an ATV just to make it down the street), but healthcare and reasonable quality education + all the add ons you need to get a kid into Harvard are affordable out of pocket; any material good available in the US is here in China (and then some) for a fraction of the price (except Apple products and Haagen Dazs ice cream, which are weirdly much more expensive); and jobs are plentiful. If I had to pick between being LMC in Detroit and LMC in Beijing, I would probably pick Beijing, despite definitely not wanting to be a Chinese citizen. Beijing is not representative of most of China certainly, but I’m not talking about the wealthy elites (they all own 6 Mercedes). None of the people in my neighborhood have college educations, and most came from small villages elsewhere in China, yet now they have reasonable living space, a car, tvs, laptops, internet, smart phones, washing machines, and secure jobs. They also have the reasonable expectation that their children will have more options and an even better life than they do. That is not true for most LMC in the US.
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But isn’t being what you call LMC in China a major achievement in the Chinese context, there being about a 800 million Chinese peasants who can only dream of that? Whereas in the American context, you can just roll out of bed, answer a help-wanted ad and (if you get the job) be lower middle class.
Also, isn’t China’s success currently under a cloud? That steady 10% yearly growth rate is looking pretty suspicious right now. The housing sector is particularly questionable. I was just reading this blog post
http://seekingalpha.com/article/234319-battle-of-the-housing-bubbles
that says that based on the ratio of housing valuations to GDP, the Chinese may have literally twice the housing bubble the US did–3.5 times GDP versus our peak 1.8 times GDP. The Japanese bubble peaked at 3.8 and a Hong Kong bubble peaked at 3.1.
It may be that you are comparing the euphoria of China’s bubble period to the US’s post-bubble experience, whereas if we wait a few years, we’ll be able to compare the US post-bubble to China’s post-bubble. I wonder whether the Chinese will take it quietly and stoically or if there is a chance of a more vigorous public backlash.
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I’ve noticed the phenomenon that B.I. is describing in Europe and have thought that a big part of the difference was that Americans spend more resources on housing (not just money, but resources of all sorts).
It’s the joke new Yorkers make about the size of houses in Texas.
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I don’t want to be rude, but truly every American I know has reasonable living space, a car, tvs, laptops, internet, smart phones, and a washing machine. Also, our “crumbling infrastructure” somehow doesn’t include schools that fall down and kill thousands of children (China), or organic farms that kill dozens of consumers with poison food (Germany), or hundreds of senior citizens dying in August heat waves because they don’t have air conditioners (France). Lately, we’ve even been surpassed in riot and mass murder (England and Norway), which were our historic strengths.
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“…but truly every American I know has reasonable living space, a car, tvs, laptops, internet, smart phones, and a washing machine.”
Wait–isn’t having your own washer and dryer pretty la-di-da for Manhattan?
I recently saw a news story (can’t find it now) about a man and his autistic son who are living out of an SUV. They hang out during the day with a laptop at coffee shops.
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Lately, we’ve even been surpassed in riot and mass murder (England and Norway), which were our historic strengths.
It is our bye year.
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Although every American I know has a reasonable living space, a car, a tv, internet, smart phones and a washing machine, it’s also true that every American I know has a college degree, 1/2 of them send their kids to private schools, and 1/2 have a second home.
I do not pretend that my personal sample is representative of the American population, though. This segregation is, I think, one of the points of the Atlantic article.
But, there’s also no question that if someone asked me if I’d rather be a random American or a random Chinese person or random Indian person, I’d choose American. I might say the same for Germany, France, UK, or Norway, but that’d probably be mostly based on cultural bias (i.e. I like America better — rather than that my material well being would be better).
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I do not pretend that my personal sample is representative of the American population, though.
I’m fairly certain that your personal sample is more representative of the American population than B.I.’s is of the Chinese population.
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I have another example of odd contemporary combinations of privation and luxury. My husband recently got a call from our mentally ill friend who lives at a men’s group home. Our friend has a Kindle now, a very handy thing for a guy with his living situation. He also has a cell phone and I believe my husband gave him an MP3 player at some point.
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Illinois is in pretty sad shape.
“Illinois loses most jobs in the nation.”
http://www.illinoispolicy.org/news/article.asp?ArticleSource=4362
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Eh, David Brooks. Government-to-Government can totally help. Sure, it may not be as sexy as hitting the Korean fishing village or having a dying girl clean your pants, but writing the law for a new credit system that enables people to buy cars with monthly payments instead of a lifetime worth of savings does make the world better for many people. Grumble…
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or having a dying girl clean your pants
What with the toxicity of dry cleaning solvents, that might be a win-win solution.
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“writing the law for a new credit system that enables people to buy cars with monthly payments instead of a lifetime worth of savings…”
Any car that requires “a lifetime worth of savings” is one that you can’t afford on monthly payments, either.
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MH,
Yes and no. I study social class in China, and I have included in my social group everyone from an illegal migrant peasant who sells stolen cell phone sim cards and counterfeit goods in Tiananmen Square (and sleeps in one room with 10 other guys, they sleep in shifts), and the son of a multimillionaire high ranking official (his parents have 6 BMWs, not Mercedes). I agree that my neighbors aren’t representative of all of China, but they’re hardly elites. Many of them don’t even have a high school education, and they’re taxi drivers, waiters, tailors, bicycle mechanics, fruitsellers, dumpling stand owners, retired factory workers, etc. (Average annual income for a taxi driver is about $7,200 US, average income of a waiter is about $7,400, average PPP GDP of China is $7,500, so yes, these people are statistically around or below average.) Also, as I think I mentioned, they’re all former peasants. So yes, while there are many peasants who dream of coming to Beijing (not as many as you might imagine, because Beijing is polluted and tightly controlled by the government so it’s hard to engage in illegal activities freely), there are also lots and lots of peasants who simply do come to Beijing, such as everyone in my neighborhood (I haven’t met a single person here born in Beijing.) With their income here, not only they can buy smart phones, but so can their parents back in the village.
My point isn’t that China is as developed as America, or the average Chinese has it as good as the average American, but that the gap isn’t as great as Americans like to pat themselves on the back for. You can be a non-elite Chinese and lead a comfortable life increasingly resembling that in industrialized countries. China’s middle class is growing, and even in the past 8 years, it’s added hundreds of millions of people, while ours is shrinking. (Beijing in 2003 vs. 2011 is a different city.) And in addition, not only do these people have pretty much any material good or convenience we have, but (in cities) they don’t have to worry about being bankrupted by school fees or medical bills. The reasonable standard of living PLUS low unemployment rate PLUS lower cost of services makes it probably easier to be a taxi driver in Beijing than in NY. Y81 mentioned that all his friends in the US were doing A-OK and leading cushier lives than those in China. I ask then, how many of his friends are middle school or high school dropouts with rudimentary literary skills?
I’m not trying to depict China with rose colored glasses, because there are still huge problems here, and there are still many very very poor people (though famine, malnutrition, and endemic, easily cured infectious diseases are not an issue in China the way they are in other developing countries). BUT, Americans seem to picture China as a cross between Zimbabwe and Stalinist Russia, with a lucky few who manage to escape to the US, which is about as accurate as picturing China as a utopia. Also, I think we have this image of ourselves stuck in the 1950s, when life in America really was better than pretty much everywhere else in the world, but the rest of the world is catching up/has caught up to us, and in many ways surpassed us but we’ve been too complacent to notice. In many ways we’ve rested on our laurels for the past 50 years while the much of the rest of the world has worked or is working like crazy to create societies people would want to live in.
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“Any car that requires ‘a lifetime worth of savings’ is one that you can’t afford on monthly payments, either.”
I strongly suspect Claudia’s talking about Second and Third World situations, where a better legal framework for things we take for granted can really make a difference in people’s lives. (Standard caveats apply, of course.)
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What with the high price of gas, I now have compact caveats.
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In one way I definitely agree with BI: the US is absolutely too complacent. We’re being lapped by people who are willing to make more sacrifice, have more discipline, and accept the realities of the world economy.
One could argue that many of the individual decisions Americans have made led them to a lower standard of living when gauged by externals, but that they are in fact happier. Any parent who says something like, “I always wanted to go to film school but my parents wouldn’t let me; I’m not doing the same to my child” is going down this path. And some people have simplified their lives purposefully.
However I believe quite a few people made these decisions not realizing that their film-school child was going to be competing in a marketing several times more brutal as their parents ever experienced. Decisions of this scale are not easily reversed in today’s economy, especially with the laissez-faire way student loans are given out, regardless of the work-applicability of the subject matter.
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“I strongly suspect Claudia’s talking about Second and Third World situations, where a better legal framework for things we take for granted can really make a difference in people’s lives.”
I was starting to think that she meant “house” and typed “car,” but only Claudia can resolve the question. Claudia?
“In many ways we’ve rested on our laurels for the past 50 years while the much of the rest of the world has worked or is working like crazy to create societies people would want to live in.”
It sounds like China is an example of the rule: 1) get productive 2) enjoy middle class comfort. That suggests that perhaps the US had better not focus on getting to 2) through a quasi-Keynesian campaign of taxing and borrowing and spending until we’re rich.
By the way, how did the Chinese receive Biden’s visit? Just from the still photos I saw, he was adorable.
“Any parent who says something like, “I always wanted to go to film school but my parents wouldn’t let me; I’m not doing the same to my child””
If you can afford it, the artsy degrees might not be that bad an idea if combined with a more commercial double major.
On the other hand, I was just listening to a caller to the Dave Ramsey show who wanted to know if he should finish up his associate’s degree in videography (or something similar). DR told him that all things being equal, it was worthwhile to finish up the degree, but that out in the real world, DR himself has never looked at a photographer’s academic credentials, but only at their body of work.
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So true re photographers. I think degrees are important *maybe* if you go into teaching, but otherwise, it’s all based on what you’ve done already. A degree program can help you with techniques and building a portfolio (my husband’s graphic design degree helped him get his first job not because of the degree, per se, but because he brought his portfolio to his interview and he’d done some interesting work). But credentialing is not important.
I’m not sure my husband has ever taken an academic course in photography, come to think of it.
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I am biased, as I have personal experience with numerous young people who got “soft” degrees and were forced to go back for more applicable masters’ degrees in order to get work. I’m thinking of degrees such as photography, Spanish, linguistics, music.
When I graduated from college in 1990 people were hiring and converting music majors, teaching them to write software, manage restaurants, etc. I just don’t see that happening any more. But YMMV.
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I think there is a distinction between “soft” degrees in things where you might actually get a job (photography, design, etc.) and things where there is, in fact, no possibility of gainful private sector employment (religion, say, or women’s studies). If music or film is really your interest, and you think you have the talent to make a living in that field, go for it. Just remember that most such fields don’t pay that well, and some of them are very competitive, so racking up lots of debt for a degree from a third-rate university is not a good idea.
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“I just don’t see that happening any more.”
Yep. That was the golden age of get a degree, any degree, it doesn’t really matter which.
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I think the flaw here is the racking up debt part — that’s what’s really crippling. Women’s studies may not have any clear route to private sector employment, but it can be an undergraduate major for someone who wants to go into teaching, law, social work, international NGO work, or even medicine (if you had the right coursework. The key is that you don’t think of it credentialing you for anything but an opportunity to learn something that you want to learn about. The same is true for photography, art, or film (with the bonus that it gives you a way to build a portfolio). With any of these choices where the route isn’t clear (and, recently I saw a thread with someone asking what do you do with a biology degree — presumably if you’re not going to medical school — there are a lot of majors that qualify) you have to have a plan for how you’re going to pay the bills you plan on paying (how much do you need to live the way you want to?). But the bills become a lot harder to pay if you’ve racked up a lot of debt.
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Oh, and though I think we’re definitely not in the golden age where people were willing to retrain their new employees, I don’t know that we couldn’t get there again.
The key to the retraining hire (the physicists who were hired to quant analysis, or the music majors to do web design, or the history major to work at an investment firm) was that they were “new” jobs for which established paths weren’t yet, well, “established.” The need to retrain went away when you could hire the super-bright person with the math skills who had also done an MBA in quantitative analysis.
Though we’re certainly not in that job market now, we could be in the future. There could be new fields that will have sufficient labor demands that being a smart person who can learn new things will be enough to get you a foot in the door.
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“The key to the retraining hire (the physicists who were hired to quant analysis, or the music majors to do web design, or the history major to work at an investment firm) was that they were “new” jobs for which established paths weren’t yet, well, “established.””
Right.
And right about the debt, too. It would be ironic (on the level of The Gift of the Magi) if the thing that keeps a young person from being able to pursue a career as a photographer was their photography degree student loans.
I personally think that nobody should go all-in with their undergraduate degree. Students should allow themselves financial leeway to go back to school at some later point if 1) it turns out they don’t like the field 2) the field dies 3) something better comes along. That means no $100k-200k undergraduate loans. Women should probably be particularly careful about this, because a lot of us find that our interests change quite a bit as mothers. I, for instance, was a Russian/print journalism double major (do I know how to pick them, or what?) but some years into my maternal journey, I think that if I ever went back to school, it would be to become a CPA. The 19-year-old (or even 25-year-old) me would never have seen that coming.
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