I was thinking about this in parallel to our own times--I'm a mid-twenties millenial who grew up in the Great Recession, and I along with everyone I know are very hard-nosed and practical about careers and life--and very aware that having a college degree doesn't make you "too good" to work retail. However, I see a LOT of struggle to understand this among people in my parent's generation. In Mary McCarthy's novel "The Group," which is set in New York during the Depression, we see a similar intergenerational struggle between a recent college grad and her mother. Does anyone know if this sort of clash was common then as now?
Morès seem to shift in alignment with events cataclysmic (and increasingly catastrophic) caused by exponential upticks in tech, and speculation, without regard to ripples, which in turn lead to market upsets and subsequent wars, to offset.