> Truck drivers are on the verge of severe disruption

I keep hearing this. Have for years. I don't expect it to actually happen anytime soon. We're still stuck in the "assisted cruise control" and "lane keeping" age, a good decade after the technologies were first introduced into consumer cars.

Let me know when the self-driving cars can do even level 4 automation on more than the well marked, sun-drenched California roads. Then we can talk about the immanent automation of all of the trucks.

I think you are in a bizarre region or do not have friendships with people in the mentioned occupations.

Nursing, plumbing, and electrical work are all stable, rewarding jobs. Nursing has no career? Get real. Nursing has as much career progression potential as a software developer: nurse -> administration/policy/public health; nurse -> manager; nurse -> nurse practitioner; nurse -> anesthetist.

My dad is technically still a nurse, so uhm, yeah I know a thing or two. In Europe at least, most admin positions are filled by people with degrees. You will need a degree to be promoted to an admin role. In fact, there are even degrees in nursing these days, which give preferential access to stable roles in areas where offer outstrips demand (i.e. poorer regions).

The best you can get without a degree is leading your own team of nurses, which basically means deciding shift patterns. My dad sorta invented his own job (back in the '70s when the world was more flexible, let's say) and "escaped", but most people he knew are still there doing shifts.

Sure, if you change the goalposts to make my argument practically a strawman.

"You can be a nurse, but you're never allowed to pursue any certificates or a BSN"

Do "real jobs" lose their authenticity once someone tries to improve themselves?

>Sure, you don't need a LI profile to get a dead-end job.

I'm pretty sure the only people who ever say that are people who were raised to hate themselves if they aren't at least in the upper-middle class. There will always be teachers making $50k per year and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, if you look closely, all across America there are millions of people earning less than $60k per year. Guess what? They're doing just fine. They're content with life. They aren't toxic as*holes who can't live with themselves because they don't make X thousand dollars per year and live in Y school district.