I agree that the jobs are tough in the apprentice years. You are literally doing the grunt work for that trade, but a) you are getting paid to learn, and b) if you start right out of high school you are still young and able-bodied. Apprenticeships only last 2-4 years typically. You could be a licensed electrician at 22 years old.
Foreman earning 170k - how many of them are there? Acsdemia is a really tough job market, maybe except for CS, and nobody claims that scientist is a great career because there are professors who make good living. After all, everyone knows how many PhDs and postdocs leave the academia because of lack of tenured positions.
If you're briliant and top 5%, then you're going to succeed in every job and every trade. The question is what kind of jobs are left to the 95%?
Unionized manufacturing does much better, with steady employment that can exceed 200/hr for the right work. These days you can pretty much only get such jobs via connection as they aren’t creating more of these jobs very frequently.
Source: The 200/hr figure was based on underwater welding for USN ships.
With the forklift you will stay at 45k forever and probably make less every year whereas for the teacher this is a starting salary and will go up. Talk to real blue collar workers and from most you will hear a not very rosy picture. Pay stagnates, management treats them like crap, terrible working conditions, very hard on the body so getting older is difficult.
Unless you are a business owner or in a very good union blue collar jobs aren't much fun.