> The biggest bang for the buck is usually increasing insulation of walls and attics

Take out a FLIR imager and observe that every window is a black hole compared to even poorly insulated walls.

yes, and it will still look like this even with the best triple-pane insulated glass. it's an inherent property of transparent materials. unless your house has an unusually large amount of window area, it's more cost effective to just consider the windows a loss and spray a foot of foam insulation across your entire attic.

True, but even relatively efficient windows are like holes compared to insulated walls. If you have a whole wall that is losing heat, fixing that is cheaper and more effective than upgrading a few square feet of windows. The best (triple paned) windows are still only equivalent to R-5.

I was told it would cost $80,000 to redo all the windows in my house.

This feeds back into OP's point - the costs are loony. There's maybe 8k worth of materials and labour to double glaze a house (and that's still on the really high end), not 80. If the average Armenian can afford it, there's no natural reason why the average American shouldn't be able to.

Armenia did not spend the last few decades convincing it’s children that only losers go into trades, so the wages an armenian window installer are quite a bit lower

> Armenia did not spend the last few decades convincing it’s children that only losers go into trades

Doing labor has been stigmatized in most of the world for the last few thousand years. You could be excluded from "polite society" on the strength of a rumor that you personally produced goods you sold.

Of course, for most of history, there were a large number of people who knew they stood at the bottom of society and so were willing to do these sorts of jobs anyway, but that's not quite the same issue.

Much of the "progress" of the last few thousand years, and in particular the last few hundred, has been the move away from the sort "polite society"-centric policies and towards a model in which we recognize the value of so many different kinds of human activities.

Besides, I think the comment you were replying to was really about the almost complete absence of post-secondary "technical education" in the USA, in particular when compared to countries like Germany.

> Besides, I think the comment you were replying to was really about the almost complete absence of post-secondary "technical education" in the USA, in particular when compared to countries like Germany.

Are these two different phenomena? If there are more glaziers in Armenia than there are in America, is that because Armenia sends the message "glaziers are winners" and America says "glaziers are losers", or because America sends the message "no matter who you are, you're a winner, and therefore you shouldn't be a glazier" while Armenia is fine with telling its losers that maybe winning isn't for them and they should consider being a glazier?

In a country that sends a clear message that "being a plumber is an important and rewarding job with above-median-income job", more people will entertain aspirations to become a plumber.

In a country that sends the message "being a plumber means you're fairly stupid, have no other talents and are doing a nasty, dirty usless job", people won't aspire to being plumbers.

Note that in the US at least, experienced & skilled plumbers are paid above median income (in some cases, a lot above median).

> Note that in the US at least, experienced & skilled plumbers are paid above median income (in some cases, a lot above median).

Something analogous is true in India, where men are willing to take substantial pay cuts (~50%) in order to hold a white-collar job instead of a blue-collar job. They do that because women don't want to marry blue-collar workers.

Focusing on income levels in marketing to the men would seem to be misplaced.

A home's worth of windows and labor for 8k? What market is that?

WTF? Are they all non-standard sizes so you’d either need custom windows or extensive framing work? Usual replacement cost is more like $200-300 per window, installed, maybe somewhat more if you want something fancy, but not... thousands.

200-300 sounds like a good price for standard size double hung.

I am guessing the person above got a quote for premium custom windows in a large house.

I have odd-ball sizes in my home that aren't double-hung style, and basic vinyl double-pane windows were about 1,000/ea on average.

I j know someone who replaced all their non-standard dimension windows on a 2500sf house with double pane windows and it was 30k. So 80k sounds high, unless it’s a really big house.

If you have stucco, then the stucco repair can exceed 10k on its own.

You may have been told that, but that is not a good offer.

this is a bold claim from someone who was no other information about iends's home (overall size, number of windows, size/shape of existing windows, local labor market, etc.).

Or zoning your HVAC if you have a multilevel. I've heard that does wonders.