People in the industry are anticipating that we’ll start seeing some preliminary changes in 2-3 years.
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Not my area. I live in a high cost of living place, and agree that the pressures on young families to figure out home ownership, child care, etc. are pretty intense.
But I’m pointing out that this is not the entire country. I have relatives in Tulsa OK- you can still buy a nice suburban style house with one “professional” income (i.e. neither a basketball legend or an orthopedic surgeon). My nieces and nephews in other parts of the midwest seem to have done the math- if they move to Seattle, Boston, NY DC they won’t be replicating the lifestyle they grew up with. But if they can figure things out in Cincinnati, Duluth, Des Moines, Racine, Columbus, etc. it’s a different story.
But I still don’t see the connection between AI and perfectionism… would love evidence.
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Good point. I would be interested to read an analysis (I assume someone has done one) of how much the erosion of such positions is driven by technology vs wanting to extract maximum profit and using technology as a justification to do so.
For example, everyone hates navigating phone menus and chat bots when they just need to talk to a real person. Companies dropped a lot of services during covid (printed menus) and haven’t gone back. Certain employees have to type all their own stuff now and don’t have administrative assistants to help with much anymore.
Are those things due to technology? Or is the technology just an excuse used to cut costs in those categories? Hotel room cleanings vanished with covid and haven’t returned. Egg prices soared and companies posted record profits. Portion sizes decreased and food prices went up and haven’t come back down again. None of those things are due to tech. I’d be really interested to see a good analysis of all of this stuff because I (NOT an economist) see it as intertwined.
So I’m worried about burdening the non-rich at the expense of enriching the rich moreso than I’m worried about AI having a direct and unique influence on jobs. But I can see it being used as an excuse to give consumers and workers the short end of the stick.
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True, the tech may be coincident rather than causal to the changes.
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I am wondering whether US News and other university ranking services might be doing more to influence the stress compared to the threat of AI taking jobs. Perhaps unpredictable admissions for the top ranked schools is also an issue.
Way back when I was in high school if you were in the top 10% of the class they you were going to get into the best local university (which was McGill). University admissions was a non-event for the top students. We did not worry about it unless we wanted to go abroad. Today down here in the US students are concerned about what sort of university they will get into. Just being a perfect student isn’t enough for the top ranked schools. You need more, and no one can tell you what that more is.
However, us older parents have seen lots of kids and coworkers who went to a university that was ranked somewhere between 50 and 150 by US News, and do very well. MIT graduates have worked with U.Mass graduates and UNH graduates and we all do fine. You do not need straight A’s to get into UNH. The graduate students at Harvard and Stanford and other top schools got their bachelor’s degrees at a rather wide range of universities. You do not need to attend MIT or UCB for undergrad to get into Harvard or Stanford for a master’s degree.
I think that high school students might look too much at university ratings, and not enough at just finding a good fit at a university that they can afford.
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As my son told me fit considerations make sense only amongst peer institutions. And rankings are short hand for assessing peers, whether in narrow or broad buckets.
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Throughout human history, innovations, technological or not, ultimately improved our lives, but they were always accompanied by lengthy shocks and disruptions. The disruptions can be painful and cause a great deal of upheaval. Marxism was born during the peak of Industrial Revolution, and arguably as a result of it. More than a century later, we’re still feeling its impact. The impact of AI revolution may be as significant as that of Industrial Revolution and we ignore it at our own peril.
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My oldest is married and in his young 30s and has already bought a house (two if you count the one he had before he relocated for his newish job).
My youngest is in his late 20s, married, and has already bought land so he could build his house and set up a farm.
Both looked carefully at affordable options and are very happy where they live.
Middle son could buy. He’s getting married this fall. But he wants to wait to see where he ends up as a doctor first. He will have a higher income than his brothers down the road, but he also has significant loans to pay off. The other two just had “basic” student loans.
Where I live there’s a lot that is still affordable - hence - attracting people vs people leaving. One of my main concerns is whether it will get too developed for me to want to live in this area, but if so, I guess we’ll be able to sell for a nice profit so there’s that.
The automobile put a lot of harness makers out of business. It’s fun to watch some documentaries about the time period and all the angst that was out there. The topic has changed, but humans haven’t.
We still do. There are help wanted signs practically everywhere. The problem is few pay decent wages and most people want to live between paychecks, not scrape and pray to be able to get by. Even $15/hr is just 31K annually before taxes, yet some (usually wealthy) are aghast that people might make that much for “menial” jobs. It could cause their fast food prices to increase, etc.
We have a problem in this country - it’s the share of wealth that is not well distributed any longer and getting worse. Students can see that - it’s not difficult to see - and they want to be self-sustaining, hence fewer are content getting jobs right out of high school if they can do better. Many will go on to trade school or community college for certificate programs at least. Meanwhile the help wanted signs continue to be plastered all over.
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The angst isnt so fun if you are the one living through it.
The NYT frequently publishes lists of where a moderate salary can support a house ownership. The list decreases every iteration and is now remarkably small. Tulsa, however, may still make the list
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The link you listed is a top 10 list, so it contains the 10 highest and 10 lowest… not one that varies in size. The full list is copied from HSH. The HSH-listed income for home ownership (assuming 20% down, average mortgage, standard DTI, … ) has been increasing rapidly since 2021 due to COVID-related home price increases followed by rapid mortgage rate increases. The rate of increase since 2021 is not a sustainable trend. The fed rate cannot continue to increase this rapidly forever. T-bill and similar rates suggest the market predicts the fed rate (and mortgage rate) is near peak.
A summary of the listed national average by year is below. Tulsa is not one of the listed cities, so I’ll use Cleveland instead. Note that the increased mortgage rate in 2022 seems more influential for Cleveland than the national average, suggesting Cleveland has not seen as large an increase in home prices as the national average.
Listed Income for Home Ownership (National Average, Cleveland)
Q4 2018 – $61k salary, $40k salary
Q4 2019 – $59k salary, $39k salary
Q4 2020 – $61k salary, $41k salary
Q4 2021 – $69k salary, $43k salary
Q4 2022 – $103k salary, $61k salary
In any case, I’m not sure what this has to do with perfectionism. Is the idea that being worried about not being able to afford a home as an adult is a key driver of perfectionism in students? I doubt that most students are thinking about home ownership. My experience is that students don’t generally think about home ownership until later on, often after marriage and having children.
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It may not be home ownership per se, but a perception among the current younger generation that getting to a basic non-poor living wage is getting more competitive with greater education and skill requirements than for their parents’ generation.
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This post in another thread hints at what today’s young Americans are up against:
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I don’t doubt that this type of feeling can contribute to things like an increased rate of students choosing to attend college. Whether accurate or not, a college degree may be perceived as required for a “basic non-poor living wage” among a good portion of students. However, this is different from perfectionism, such as striving to get a perfect 4.0 GPA in HS/college.
I could see some overlap among those who think a B will keep them out of a “good” college.
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It’s not uncommon to see perfectionist students on this forum who believe they need near perfect stats to get in to an extremely selective private college, but I’ve yet to see a poster who believes they need near perfect stats for having a “basic non-poor living wage”, home ownership, or similar.
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People believe this because nobody really knows if the non perfect grade matters or not, depending on your demographics …
And nobody will articulate the whole chain of causation. They just use a summary goal of getting into a good college so as to cut out the riskier paths through life. It is near-term uncertainty reduction in some dynamic programming sense; like playing chess with a positioning approach.
It is easy to claim that the other guy is not rational. I think when large numbers of people are doing some activity, and making some claims as to why they are doing it, and we are critical of them, maybe we need to see if our own biases are dictating part of our response.
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You must have missed the “winner-take-all” portion of the conversation. If the winner takes all, then that leaves nothing for everyone else. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid.
A good portion of posters do list longer term goals, including future career paths and in some cases even specific numbers for future earnings. As a general rule, perfectionist posters do not appear to be striving for common outcomes, like the ones that were discussed (livable wage, owning a home, …). Instead, whether right or wrong, they believe the unique near perfect stats are important for having a unique outcome, which can be a driver of perfectionism.
Suffice to say that due in part to high levels of income inequality, I know a substantial number of young people aged 18-24 who doubt they will match their parents’ standard of living or can even afford to have children. Yes, many kids do think about such issues very young. And if they realize how expensive their education is, it doesnt take much for them to conclude they can never afford to support kidsat their likely salaries
Do you really not know of 20 year olds with such concerns? My youngest, age 20, says her classmates talk about it frequently and it stresses many.
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To add to this, a lot of the income inequality exists these days because our economy is becoming quasi winner take all in several professions.
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