We're all within 7 or so years of age, except the boat repair who is considerably older.

This isn't a contest IMO, we all do more than OK. But it's definitely not fair to say that college pays more than trades. Both have huge swaths of pay ranges, from effectively zero, to millions. But if you're optimizing for making as much money as possible, I'd argue you're doing it wrong anyways.

The details matter - 7 years is medical school and some residencies for example.

To not take into account the age is silly. And the entire point of the original post is arguing about earnings, so…

Median income and age don't paint the whole picture, though, either -- you need to take into account things like student loan debt, or benefits, or even taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere).

Learning a trade and going to college for a white collar job are two different routes entirely, in my opinion. Even assuming that the skillsets were interchangeable, a lot of trades people would never trade their job for an office job and vice versa.

> taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere).

some good points, but I wanted to call this out specifically. when we're discussing at a high level what career paths should be encouraged, possibly via policy, I don't think we should price in the ability to evade taxes.

Oh, I completely agree we should pay our taxes– but this swings the other way too, for stocks/equities, which themselves under long-term capital gains can be taxed at much less than income (which a certain segment of US population would consider a form of legal tax evasion) or at a certain point borrowed against ad-infinitum without paying taxes, and the fact that tradespeople will often pay much more in sales tax than office workers. What is legal and what is not in terms of paying taxes _is itself_ a high level policy decision meant to incentivize a certain way of work/living– just look at the tax policies around W4 employees versus 1099 contractors, or NSOs vs ISOs, filing jointly vs married, child and education tax credits, or really anything the IRS makes a decision on ever.

My point is it's just not at all a 1-1 comparison when determining "total compensation" across sectors like this, and that median income is a bad metric to use on its own to determine whether someone would be better off going to college or learning a trade.