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Alison Stern Wellner packs up her old kit bag and busts the myths surrounding homeownership.
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|4.24.06 @ 8:44AM|#
It seems like this article repeatedly cites a relatively uninteresting statastic, simply how often and how far a person moves. I think the more interesting stat would be, how far away do you end up from where you started, in the long run?
I'm thinking of my friend Steph here, who has moved four times in the five years I've known here, and lived in Michigan, Germany, and New York in that time. That makes her sound extremely mobile -- but after her last move, she's back living in the same town she grew up in, and it seems likely she's going to stay there a long time.
Likewise, I've moved four times since 1993, always from one county in Michigan to another -- but I never moved more than two hours' drive away from the town my great-grandfather grew up in.
Hmmm... guess this sort of thing leads me to wonder if we're even less mobile than the stats given suggest!
|4.24.06 @ 8:57AM|#
Wow, a myth exploded. An even more pervasive myth is the one that keeps most Americans thinking they're going to get rich. Very few will ever even make it out of debt.
MP|4.24.06 @ 9:06AM|#
Very few will ever even make it out of debt.
You aren't born in debt. The people with the biggest issues are the ones paying 200K for a Liberal Arts degree. ROI, people! For most others, the American Dream is still alive and well.
|4.24.06 @ 9:06AM|#
I made it out of debt last month. Feels good. Not a penny owed to anyone. But back on topic: I've lived in the same building for 16 years and worked for four companies in that time, each within a half-hour drive. So maybe this indicates greater local opportunites for many of us, at least outside the rust belt.
|4.24.06 @ 9:35AM|#
MP:
Yeah, it's them intelectuals that aren't gonna be rich. The rest of us have the good sense to buy lottery tickets.
Ed:
Back on topic? How could the minor details of your life have any significance beyond your own personal "rust belt"?
|4.24.06 @ 9:39AM|#
Maybe one of those little pillows with the hole in the middle would help you out, Joe.
|4.24.06 @ 9:40AM|#
"Very few will ever even make it out of debt."
Those fucking ghoulish corporations, they're always forcing debtors to buy H2s on credit and to eat out every night. If only we had choices on how to spend our money. Why doesn't the government do something about this?
Timothy|4.24.06 @ 9:44AM|#
James Jasper blames increased mobility for everything from environmental degradation to lack of respect for the government to high divorce rates.
1) Why is "respect for government" considered a good thing?
2) I think the government gives us plenty of reasons not to respect it in the first place.
|4.24.06 @ 9:55AM|#
I would be interested in knowing what fraction of these moves are kids going off to college in a different state. That seems quite common to me. However, it also seems normal that the vast majority of these students either return to their home state afterwards, or remain in the college's state after graduation. I would guess that is true for more than 80% of the people I met in college.
As for me, after years of grad school and an international post-doc, I just scored my first big corporate job - sixty miles from my parents. No one should be surprised.
|4.24.06 @ 9:56AM|#
If 3 percent of the population is moving to a different state each year, I'd say that qualifies as highly mobile - at least in the long run. Those 3 percents add up pretty quickly over a decade or two.
How else do explain the trends, such as the one pointed out last week by the Census Bureau, that show population declines in all the major central cities and population booms in the outlying suburbs? How about the population growth in the South and Southwest, which is being primarily driven by flight from the North and the coasts? These are major demographic trends that will change the very nature of this country, and yet you dismiss them as insignificant...
|4.24.06 @ 10:16AM|#
I think you confused the name with Howard Stern's ex-wife or something
|4.24.06 @ 11:07AM|#
Good old joe is sooooo right -- if only people would come to their senses, seeing the light and acknowledge that they will never make big money in their lifetime, they of course would start voting Democrats.
After all, joe and his Democratic brethren are the priestly caste of this benevolent and inexhaustible being, calling itself The State, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, ointment for all wounds, balm for all suffering, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all problems, truths for all minds, distractions for all varieties of boredom, milk for children and wine for old age, which provides for all our needs, foresees all our desires, satisfies all our curiosity, corrects all our errors, amends all our faults, and exempts us all henceforth from the need for foresight, prudence, judgment, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance, and industry.
Who needs to get rich, then?
|4.24.06 @ 11:29AM|#
I was thinking last night how sweet it would be to be rich. Thierry Henry (a french football player, as in 'soccer') has been offered $300,000 a week to play for Real Madrid.
I just thought about all the things you could buy, and the holidays and food and stuff and how happy I would be.
And then I was sad.
|4.24.06 @ 11:34AM|#
Joe is right so far as that goes--the majority of Americans will never be independently wealthy or even close to it, yet a lot of people think that being non-rich is merely a temporary position, and any day now they'll win the lottery or be given a lucrative recording contract or some such thing that will catapult them into the upper classes.
|4.24.06 @ 11:58AM|#
'...yet a lot of people think that being non-rich is merely a temporary position, and any day now they'll win the lottery or be given a lucrative recording contract or some such thing that will catapult them into the upper classes.'
Really? That seems like sort of wild claim, what evidence do you have to support it?
Highly educated people do tend to be pretty mobile, from my experience. Professors, researchers, executives. The problem seems to be an unwarranted extrapolation of this trend to people who have skills that are in less demand.
|4.24.06 @ 12:17PM|#
Myths of home ownership:
Myth #1: You own the home.
|4.24.06 @ 12:49PM|#
I can't say I outright disagree with the interpretation of the data cited by Alison Stern Wellner, however I'm not sure it actually debunks a myth. I think too much information is lost when all moves are condensed to a single percentage value. For instance, if 20% of the population moves every year, but the same people move again the next year and again the year after that, you could reasonably assert that the other 80% of the population is stable as it almost never moves. On the other hand, if a different 20% of the population moves every year, everyone in the country would be moving every 5 years.
So which is the actual case? Have we moved from a society with an itinerant class to one where travel is more widespread and routine? Can we tell just from comparing trends in total number of moves?
uncle sam|4.24.06 @ 12:59PM|#
A lot of people would be better off if they didn't have to pay so much for the beneficence of their government.
|4.24.06 @ 1:04PM|#
The statistics show that the youth are poor and the old are rich, and that many of the rich were poor a decade or two earlier. May not be what you see with your anecdotal evidence, but it is borne out by statistics.
I think society is more mobile today: measured in travel, and commute distances. People travel farther and more frequently be it for vacation, seminars, meetings, etc. People also commute farther, and areas which were once considered too far from the metropolis later become within commutable range.
I speculate that the existence of reliable cars, and the ease of getting on an airplane, allow us to live closer to our definition of "home" than was possible decades past, and that may explain some of the data.
Larry A|4.24.06 @ 1:08PM|#
Chad: However, it also seems normal that the vast majority of these students either return to their home state afterwards, or remain in the college's state after graduation.
One additional category here, the students who marry someone from a different state and move there.
Lemur: If 3 percent of the population is moving to a different state each year, I'd say that qualifies as highly mobile - at least in the long run. Those 3 percents add up pretty quickly over a decade or two.
Two concepts of "mobile" here. The perception the article is countering is that lots of people in the U.S. move often enough so they never become part of a community. A family that moves to a suburb or a sunbelt state, buys a home, takes out a library card, and joins a church is not "mobile" in the sense of being "footloose."
Jo: Highly educated people do tend to be pretty mobile, from my experience. Professors, researchers, executives. The problem seems to be an unwarranted extrapolation of this trend to people who have skills that are in less demand.
"Less demand?" NOT!
Sorry, I'm waiting for someone who can fix my air conditioner. The difference is not level of demand, but distribution. Professors work at colleges, and therefore must live close to one that has a position for their particular speciality. In my town there is exactly one university, with a small faculty. Most towns near here have no college, and therefore no professors. To change positions a professor where I live would have to move at least two counties away.
But there are air conditioners everywhere in Texas, and thus my repairman can live anywhere. If she isn't satisfied with her present job she can choose from a dozen different companies here, as well as companies in half a dozen towns within comfortable commuting distance.
As for reasons why mobility is slowing, add the communications revolution. The company that published my novel is incorporated in British Colombia. Within that company my publisher lives in Austin, Texas. My editor just followed her husband from the west coast to Virginia. I have no idea where the artist who designed my cover lives. The company has other authors who live as far away as Australia.
R C Dean|4.24.06 @ 2:01PM|#
An even more pervasive myth is the one that keeps most Americans thinking they're going to get rich.
I would guess that one of the two biggest barriers to more Americans accumulating wealth over time is the tax burden they carry.
Your thoughts, joe?
|4.24.06 @ 7:24PM|#
Good old joe is sooooo right -- if only people would come to their senses, seeing the light and acknowledge that they will never make big money in their lifetime, they of course would start voting Democrats.
Uh, I think capital J Joe is a different joe from the Democratic Joe we've all come to know and love. Too many Joes, really. A shot of penicillin should clear that right up.;)
|4.24.06 @ 7:55PM|#
For years I've had a personal vendetta against the mortgage interest expense deduction. (Traffic signals irritate me too.) Now I have more ammunition: It keeps folks from being mobile.
After a relatively brief experience with home ownership--ending with meeting face-to-face the dreaded "ice dam" which causes water to run down your interior walls and into your light fixtures--I have been a renter.
Subsequently, the Little Woman and I have gone on to be mobile, healthy, wise, bon vivants.
Yeah, baby!
(In fact we'll be moving again soon as our landlady/daughter is kicking us out.)