A lot of the trades are hard on your body. By the time you are 45-50 your knees could be wrecked and that makes it hard to do service work like electric/HVAC.

There are an argument that desk work isnt healthy either but that is a different discussion.

Also, IME, tradesmen always have the nicest houses regardless of income because they or someone they can trade with will do top quality work for barely any compensation.

Suvivorship bias?

I imagine that those that are still in the trades are managers/owners. Those that have blown out knees, but don't have the skills to manage/own/washed out a decade ago... Are not.

There's not enough room in the trades for every person who did work in their 20s to manage/own in the 40s, unless you have a lot of attrition.

Point is, for a time, we had access to some 0.1er% shit that’d I’d never get to utilize in my “office job” while my wife would trade for some truly spectacular experiences with the spouses of CEOs and CTOs. Heck, she’s half the reason I got the network I have these days. There’s something to be said about someone saying nice things about you to a captive audience :)

Definitely. There are a lot of young guys in the trades who no one should hire under any circumstances. They do drugs, drink, and even start fights on the job site. They get fired frequently and just move to the next job. There are so many of them that it makes for a toxic workplace for anyone getting into the trades.

That's a completely different issue from having injured your back or shoulder or knee so often that you need surgical corrections just so you can remain functional at a resting state.

As a woman who likes trades like manual work as hobby - a lot of those do actually depends on physical strength. At hobby level it does not matter that much, but to achieve actual commercial productivity is simply much harder without all those muscles.

One was a heavier older lady, imagine a burly dinner lady and you’ve probably got her. The other woman was maybe in her 30s and looked trim, but she had arms gnarled like branches and you could see a six pack through her tshirt.

Mad respect for women who choose a profession like that, but it needs to be a lifestyle and it will consume you. As an untrained man with a normal (assumed) amount of testosterone, my body adapted over two shifts of swinging 70lb metal bars around.

You already have. I want to see the graduation stats.

> It didn't matter what education level they attained, across the population the outcome was consistent. Having a job while young made a huge difference - almost as much as having a degree.

Where’s the link?

Sorry but your point is way too centered on your anecdotes. Fact remains that college graduates make more money.

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...

My salary immediately doubled and has since quadrupled in the 5 years since I attended. It isn't be a great option for everyone, and not every attendee has had a great outcome. But it can work for those with an affinity for analytical work and willingness to work 70-hour weeks for 12 straight weeks.

Hack Reactor has made their outcome statistics public. https://www.hackreactor.com/outcomes

Come on. The stats support colleges. You need to provide more than anecdotes to be taken seriously. I could just as easily blurt out that I make more than all of his 5 kids combined because I went to college and boom, anecdote refuted. This isn’t how it’s done in conversations worth having.

So it is very relevant, and your statement here is basically an admission that your 40% stat I keep seeing in these threads is equally irrelevant. "You can make more money and still be burdened" equates to "making more money won't necessarily make your life better." If that's true, what the hell is the point of going to college? To make 40% more?

I’m not sure what your point is.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co...

It’s not some insurmountable number.

Unfunded grad school is pretty much never worth it for that reason, especially for non-STEM fields (but even for STEM, it's still pricey enough that it probably isn't worth paying full price). Med school is also pricey, but high salaries make up for that, and what I've heard of law school is that it isn't worth the cost if you aren't going to a top 20 school.

But as for specifically undergraduate education, I do think the financials make it worth it in many cases, but it's misleading to generalise across all majors. 30k of debt for a computer science degree is likely worth it, sure. Is it worth it for an English degree? Debatable, but 30k of debt at least isn't going to financially hobble someone for the rest of their life. Is it worth paying full sticker price (if e.g. the student doesn't qualify for financial aid) for a sociology degree? I think that would be dubious.

Many college grads complete degrees without a strong reason for it nor have they explored the potential opportunities.

Even an English degree is fine if you have an understanding of what you’re trying to do and set yourself up properly, e.g journalist, technical writing, marketing track vs the degree and no clue

> Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs.

Well, it's hard to tell whether this is true for 'most' bachelor's degree track jobs (this depends on what one means by 'skilled trades' which I don't believe there's an objective definition for), but I would say it's probably true for at least some of them. It seems that electricians, for instance, have higher starting pay than English degree holders, as well as higher median mid-career income. So in that respect it's misleading to say that everyone should go to college because going to college raises their income by 40%.

It made me think of the way some professional licenses work. The payment to keep the credential is essentially a tax. Some employers won't list the credential on a job description because then they'd be required to pay for it. But they only hire people with said credential, essentially shifting the tax on the individual and creating a kind of shadow job hiring process where the people being turned away may not be sure that getting the credential would open the door for them.

> post random fact

> source?

> no source, but here's more random facts