In America 2025, there is no better path to a high income and quality of life than learning a trade, then learning how to manage other tradespeople and then owning a company for such a trade.
In the trades, if you are slightly smarter than average, have a good work ethic and an inkling of entrepreneurial drive, you will be very successful.
I would like someone to mythbust this belief as it seems like it runs off nothing but anecdotes. White collar folks seem to pull this one out as a grass is greener take on a different life path when their industry is starting to unwind.
>I would like someone to mythbust this belief as it seems like it runs off nothing but anecdotes.
It can't happen for everyone, which is why all wages need to rise to make living affordable and then some. Capitalists love these competitive filters while disregarding all of the people that failed, but still promote it as viable without disclosing success/failure rates (and as anecdotes often do).
A lack of awareness about the realities of starting a business - and the consequences of not succeeding - is repeatedly the dumbest thing I see espoused about going into the trades and is the equivalent of advertising some kid's anomalous yearly salary that includes overtime.
I can't speak for all trades, but in my experience 'owning a company' and 'high quality of life' rarely go hand in hand. Owning a company is hard. It's a 24/7 job where you are managing customers, employees, accounting, etc., and you can hire people to help but ultimately it's on you if someone screws up and orders the wrong cabinets.
I'm happier working for Big Corp in an air-conditioned office.
You've noticed that the labor market is inherently a political problem. The only thing that sustains quality of pay and conditions is regulation and organization.
In the last 25 years, I've built 3 houses and remodeled half a dozen others. Worked very closely with these guys across the entire spectrum. From the unskilled, trying to cheat their way, to the 75 year old 50yr Journeyman who will never retire because he loves it.
The trades were decimated by immigration and the race for cheaper labor, higher margins. What were once solid middle class jobs, were undercut by unskilled labor masquerading as skilled. Over time, the market raised the rate of the unskilled and lowered the rate of the skilled. Prices rose to meet the market but quality declined. Unskilled were charging the same rates as skilled.
Today there are very few Journeyman tradesmen left. They were forced out. Which is why the market is crying for these skills and awarding them with high wages.
Looking forward, the entire nation is lined up to build. Those who mange this growth and bring the skills, will become wealthy.
I have worked in the trades as an electrician and then became an estimator/Project Manager. Most are small businesses that are barely hanging on. It is often not a path to wealth. Many of the smaller businesses are being bought up by private equity now to drive up prices. The tradesmen are not getting wealthy and typically will not become wealthy. Licensing a business is different than the license a tradesman gets. Rules vary by state and are often require the approval of your would be competitors, regardless of demonstrated skill and time in the trade.
The facts are that the overwhelming majority of Trades(people), are terrible business people. They may be excellent at their jobs, but very, very , very few have the business skills to build a solid business. Those who do, do extremely well well. Those who hire people who have the skill, do really, really well.
Not that different from engineers. Very few have business skills, but those who do, do very well.
Programming used to be another skilled trade, before big tech and big money took over everything and corrupted it all.
If there's good money in the trades, what's to stop them from similarly consolidating into national mega corps like every other field? Especially once we start encouraging former tech bros and VCs in, bringing with them their former mindsets?
A lot of HVAC companies have gone corporate now. Smaller companies are bought out and consolidated, higher paid and experienced personnel are let go, cheaper replacements are brought in that don't have much of a clue how to deal with older established systems, but they will definitely tell you if something is broke after you told them it was broke and offer to sell you a brand new system install that they don't have to troubleshoot with the skills and experience they lack and has a much higher margin than replacing a simple rollout switch or swap a new transformer or control board.
Installing new systems sure. But diagnosing and repairing problems is far from it. You are mixing gas fired devices, compressors and refrigerants, pressurized water systems, electrical systems, and mechanical systems tieing all together. And just junking all those systems because a $5 part wore out as expected and the owners of the system are lied to that it is unfixable is a colossal waste of money and human labor. All just so corporate owners have more money to scrape off the larger margins of a full install of a new system which are going to break down just the same in a few years again.
4 years to get a license in my state. 2 nights to get the EPA 608 cert which is the only real education you get, the rest is slave labor to get the sign-off for the license. The whole regulatory apparatus was co-opted by current industry to stop 'disruptions', you're going to have to go through the ol boy club to even get a seat at the table and even then they will just regulate your edge away.
This is the thing 'disruptors' don't get about the trades. It's heads I win, tails you lose. They just coopt the laws to ensure the fundamentals don't change.
I’m a software engineer. I’m over 50 and experienced a difficult time getting a new position after my last one evaporated.
I am now working as a “programmer” for CNC systems. (That means I draw shapes in CAD, lay them out on steel plates, and post those to the machines doing the work.) We have torch, plasma, and laser cutters, metal forming (really just bending), and a programmable drill.
The tasks involved in completing the processing after my work are: fetch the metal plate (warehouse crane, forklift), place the plate (must be aligned and at the correct origin), collect the cut parts onto pallets (organized by customer), operate forming machines, and/or feed beams into the drill.
Those tasks don’t exactly require skill. Because I’m a software guy, I’m always looking for opportunities for automation. We’re about as close to fully automated as you can get without advanced robots (requiring dexterity, observation, etc.)
I guess my point is that there’s little room for former tech bro/VC “innovation” in my particular industry. I can see how it’s similar in many trades. They don’t necessarily require “skills” because anyone can learn quickly how to do them. Anyone but today’s robots.
Fishing used to be a skilled trade in the rivers, seas and the oceans until giant ships operated by multinational companies took most of the market share and the fish people could sell. You got the point, small ones (at least most) don't stand a much chance nor are they efficient.
Now these industries should only be treated as a hobby or something that is expected already like knowing English language for writing corporate emails.
If you can't wire a house after 2 weeks of education, they were going to burn your house down anyway (especially if you are using AFCI). It's like one simple and highly redundant 300 page book of information at worst.
I will never understand why electricians are always held to this kind of standard and reverence. Framing my house took 10x the amount of study and learning than it did wiring it, and that included me doing a mains underground power extension and all of the mains meter and breaker.
I have to assume a huge amount of it is national and local regulations, which seem to change every freakin year. I read relevant sections a decade ago re: outlets with no ground(has to be on gfci breaker) and wiring a bathroom(has to be on separate circuit). Now you're apparently not allowed to put outlets on the side of or back of kitchen islands? Just random things like this.
I couldn't imagine having to keep up with all of it. I'd guess many don't...
atleast for general contractors - Its a fundamentally different business model. Little growth, tiny margins, low fixed costs and tremendous requirement for trust and quality assurance.
What are they fighting a civil war for? Cheaper gas? More fast food? There is nothing now or in the near future that would fracture the country enough to fight. Once commerce stops, people will lose their collective minds. You cant tell Americans how to park, how to dress let alone what to eat or drink or do. Good luck with the collective will needed to fight for an ideologue in the 21st century.
> Good luck with the collective will needed to fight for an ideologue in the 21st century.
Look at the January 6 mob...
I can imagine there's the willingness to fight for democracy or the return of the rule of law, or just "to see those corrupt scumbags be punished", people had food in 2020 but still went to the streets because of the police murder of George Floyd.
There were only a few thousand people at 1/6. There are 40mm people in CA, just as an example. 300mm Americans are not going to bow down to a man who wants to be king.
People who think we'll end up in an armed conflict with some authoritarian enemy, watch too many movies and game too much. If there is a war, it will be financial and electronic. Americans call 911 when their internet goes down, they are not going to be led into a war against their fellow Americans let alone the world because of something like DEI or Juan the illegal. Instead, they'll rise up and take these billionaires and the politicians down.
Judges/Courts control the offices that control the military and the executive. Without the rule of law, you do not have a military, you have a militia. If you think a military staffed by patriots, 70% minorities and 1st generation American immigrants, are going to bow down to a dictator and their illegal, immoral orders, you probably watch too many movies and play too many games...
We elected the dumbest man in history, and let him pack his cabinet and administration with the dumbest people in society.
All while Congress has completely usurped their duty and bowed down to a man, who now considers himself King.
Trump has 15 months before he is neutered politically and 20 before he is impeached and replaced or passes away (he is not a healthy man). What happens in that timeframe depends on what YOU let happen. What are YOU going to do?
Convincing yourself that Trump is just dumb is a big part of why we're in this mess.
Trump knows very well how to achieve his goals. The problem with Trump is his lack of any discernible ethics, morality, or compassion. Not his lack of ability to gain power and accomplish his goals.
If you listen to him speak, he is not a smart person. What baffles me is how and why you'd think he was anything but an idiot.
Everything about him and his actions and words reek of stupidity. He does not hold any understanding of the complexities of anything. He does not write. When he does, he misspells and uses incorrect grammar. He does not read. He has rudimentary understanding of basics. Etc.
So why is it that you find him to be intelligent? What exactly does he say or write that would lead you to this conclusion?
And none of that has kept him from achieving his goals.
He has a genius for communication and persuasion that is undeniably effective. He understands the weak points in our political system and attacks them directly.
He's dumb when it comes to things educated people care about. But he's smart when it comes to getting what he wants.
Did you consider that 30% of Americans are complete lunatics? Trump isn't clever or smart, he's batshit insane and appeals to the barely literate and *-ists that have been programmed with a bloodlust by Fox for two decades.
This is well written. It also seems to describe society at large, especially our current society. So many things work so well, they become invisible. After time, people dont even realize how much is working behind the scenes to make everything work well and they assume we dont need those things.
Conflating luck and timing to skill and intent is a hell of a way to lionize someone. One man's wealth is not a measure of skill, it's a measure of greed.
Apple could / should be the one to tackle this by allowing iPhone iOS users the ability to create their own social circles. They dipped their toes into this a little with Invites.
Do we really need a central server to manage our friends and our circles? Decentralize the whole thing and it neuters FB and the ad surveillance universe.
It's not a top down broadcast and the SCOTUS has a hard time wrapping their head around 250 individual people receiving individualized content with no oversight or necessity for accuracy.
Because it's not the TWEAKING of the content tho tis the problem. It's the ability to manipulate individuals using fake or altered content.
Not sure why this is a hard one to understand but with the ability to individualized media, you can easily feed people propaganda and they'd never know. Add in AI and deep fakes, and you have the ability to manipulate the entire discourse in a matter of minutes.
How do you think Trump was elected? Do you really think the average 20 something would vote for a Republican, let alone a 78 year old charlatan? They were manipulated into the vote. And that is the most innocuous possible use of such a tech.
In the trades, if you are slightly smarter than average, have a good work ethic and an inkling of entrepreneurial drive, you will be very successful.