People entering the workforce forty years ago could reasonably guess when they'd retire and what they'd be doing at the time. I know very few people who think they'll have the same job five years from now. It seems very likely that the argument that the economy is getting more stable is false.

Here's why: underlying predictability probably increases volatily. People love to lever up when they're certain; "Private Equity" as an asset class refers to both VC deals and leveraged buyouts because in both cases, they fine-tune their leverage to get the same (high) volatility. Increased certainty makes bankers more willing to lend, and speculative buyers are always willing to borrow.

In my experience, speculative borrowers and the marginal banker overestimate decreases in volatility. Thus, a more superficially predictable economy will lever up fast enough to more than counteract that (sort of like the theory that airbags increase traffic fatalities because drivers overestimate how safe they are and thus take extra risks).

For economic volatility to actually dampen, you'd need economists to come up with better predictions that sound really stupid, so bankers and speculators would disregard them.