I have a graduate degree. The CS portions of that have indeed been useful in my career as a programmer. However, the rest of my liberal arts education have been helpful in... well... conversing with other liberal arts grads. I sound fairly well-spoken, I suppose, when writing up documentation that no one usually reads. I can reasonably frame a critical argument, except that I live in a world now where most discussion takes place in social echo chambers anyway.

I am pleased with my life outcome, and do not envy the person being quoted, primarily because I lucked into a hot market at the ideal time. But if I were starting out today, I'm not so sure of how smug I would be in comparing my career prospects, core values, and likelihood of happiness and self-actualization to this person's.

Frankly, I think that "blue collar" work would have to pay twice as much as "white collar" work before society would start to re-align itself accordingly. Because quite frankly, we're going on 3 or 4 generations now of the mindset that white collar work is something to aspire to, while blue collar work is a sign of failure and low social status.

Our entrenched cultural bias lags behind the cold economic reality for most young people coming up today.