While it is probably not possible to speak of "the entire punk movement" as a single thing (to the extent that there even is a punk movement per se), but the 1970s punk movement in London was not motivated by:

> seeing the rat race coming and stepping aside

it was a response to several different elements occuring alongside and simultaneously:

  * the bleakness of 1970s Britain
  * the perception of significant barriers to entry into the world of artistic creation (i.e. you needed to be "very good" or even "virtuosic" to participate)
  * racial dynamics unfolding as the children of the Windrush generation began to come of age, and new waves of immigrants from the "Commonwealth" were more visibly present. 
  * boredom with the latest Yes album

There was no rat race coming - almost nobody was going to participate in that (a good and a bad thing, all at once).

Now, punk in NYC at about the same time might have been very different, and I'm certain that punk in other places and later times has almost certainly been very different. But that original incarnation was not an attempt to avoid the rat race, it was a desperate reaching for something of one's own (even if that was just a white riot), because society wasn't going to give you anything worth having.