391–400 of 915 posts
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Sitting in a chair all day is not good for your health long term.
Right, but even when you're in poor health from sitting in a chair all day you can keep sitting in that chair and doing the same work. Whereas if you're a skilled trades worker and break your back by falling off a ladder then you can't work at all. So the downside risk is more severe.
"We need more tradespeople" seems to be an evergreen news article. My brother in law is an electrician. He is paid alright, enough to live on. But there are HUGE downsides. He does not receive health insurance. He does not get paid vacation. In order to match decent white-collar pay, he needs to work overtime. His company pushes hard to get jobs finished fast, causing people to cut safety corners. Many of his coworke…
Every time I employ a tradesman to fix something around here, I get an astonishingly high bill.
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The ratio of power between labor and capital has swung hard toward capital over the past 30 years. I think the number of people who become "wealthy" due to salary income alone is probably small and shrinking. You used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead of 18 months if you worked overtime. Todays economics make it so working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 years instead of 17 years.
> You used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead of 18 months if you worked overtime. Todays economics make it so working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 years instead of 17 years. Actually, if 50 years ago you used to be able to pay for a house in 18 months, today you should be able to pay for a house in ~30 months: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco... . You're thinking of a t…
One could argue that they HAVE caught quite well: if you consider jobs like web development (opposed to, say, AI/ML development) as a new skilled trade in a world that is becoming more digital.
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I'm a millennial. First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. So everyone went and got a college degree, and since so many people had it it wasn't a status symbol anymore, so that wasn't enough to get a good middle class job. And then a bunch of people were told they shouldn't have gotten those degrees and they were worthless. Then we were told to go into STEM. So lots of peop…
> First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. Something strange is happening here that I can't quite understand. Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that are way older than me and I first started college in 1999. Yes, I heard a persistent low rumbling of "go to college," but the idea that "any degree would do" is alien to me. Of course I knew that some maj…
* You should go to college.
* You should do what you love.
* Sure some jobs pay more that others, but that doesn't matter if you are doing what you love.
What was completely left out of the discussion was that some degrees won't actually enable you to do what you love. They'll just load you with tons of debt, making it harder to even get by let alone do what you love as a side gig. I never once heard a guidance councilor or other adult tell that to me or my peers. The "it is rare to get that sort of job" speech was reserved for people who wanted to play sports or be rock-stars, not those thinking about an academic degree. Maybe it was because I was from an underprivileged community, and any students who showed a desire to go to college were encouraged, not stifled.
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This isn't the case for all trades people. It might be a bad area or a bad employer. I've know trades folks who are electricians, plumbers, carpenters, work in road construction, etc. They typically work reasonable hours, have medical, and are paid at or above the median income for where they live. They didn't rack up debt getting into this either. This is not a bad deal for many people.
There's a semi-retired craftsman I watch regularly on youtube - Essential Craftsman. Almost all long-term success stories in the trades which he tells directly or gets from his friends involve transitioning from a tradesman to an employer. You're selling your health and body as a tradesman. If you can make the transition to running a trades business, then you're selling your brainpower more than your body. Success st…
Selling your brainpower meaning managing the people who will sell their health and body as tradesmen. A minor racket.
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Plumbers and electricians contort their body and are moving up and down into cavities of various sizes all day. It definitely takes a toll on you.
Can't be worse than yoga. Edit: Downvote me all you like. I've done yoga, I've done plumbing, I've done electrical. Yoga takes the cake by a mile for most painful contorting. And yet I know an 86 yo woman who has been doing yoga 3 time a week forever and is fit and sharp.
There's your speculation and incredulity, and then there's all the people I've talked to who do it. They disagree with you.
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> First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. Something strange is happening here that I can't quite understand. Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that are way older than me and I first started college in 1999. Yes, I heard a persistent low rumbling of "go to college," but the idea that "any degree would do" is alien to me. Of course I knew that some maj…
As someone who went to school for English in 2000, I can say that while those jokes existed the context here is misunderstood, they were told by business majors about the liberal arts, or anything academic. Heck in 2000 a CS degree wasn't positioned as that much more valuable than an English degree, and if you looked at the preceding decade you'd see that was statistically true. The change for the current generation…
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Every time I employ a tradesman to fix something around here, I get an astonishingly high bill.
This is the cost of not having a social safety net and public services, where everybody pays a little bit and everybody benefits. It's not just the people who are self-employed that benefit. Their customers also benefit from lower prices, because self-employed people don't have such high expenses. Of course, it all gets paid for eventually anyway, but consistently over time, and ideally proportional to wealth and/or…