I'm a pro. I'll agree about guards on a table saw. The ones we get in the USA are without exception crap. I haven't used a Wadkin or European style saw. I can only assume that as much as they must cost to make, there's some merit to them. A riving knife is a really nice feature and I wholeheartedly recommend leaving it in.

Shapers are a mixed bag. If you're running enough straight stock making moldings, you've probably got enough featherboards and/or hold downs if not a power feeder set up that you'd really have to try to get hurt. For smaller jobs or curves work, it's a tossup, but yeah, a lot of it gets done without a guard.

Jointers I'm going to disagree with you: I pretty much refuse to run without a guard. Except for rabbeting, I haven't found a good reason to do so. I have done so in other shops, usually on machines so old that the guard was lost 50 years ago and is irreplaceable. Generally though, if I don't see a guard on a jointer in a shop, I'm pretty wary about what else might be being treated a bit too casually. A guard on a jointer is an easy win with very little downside.

The expensive saws in the US come with good guards. However there is no way you can put a $300 guard on a saw and sell the whole saw for $100. Thus cheap saws get cheap guards that get removed (if they are even installed). Stick with hand tools until you can afford the expensive saws with good guards is my advice.

The above is about table saws. There are other power saws you should consider instead that are cheap and work. However there is a reason the table saw is considered the king of so many woodshops and until you get a good one you will be compromising ability to do some common jobs. Just because everything can be done with a rock to high doesn't mean most people are willing to do that and I don't blame them: a table saw should be in your plans or shop if you are a woodworker.

Out of curiosity: who does make a table saw with a decent guard in the non-industrial price range? Even Powermatic and SawStop ship with guards that suck.

For the record, mine is a Unisaw from the late '70s. I've got an original Delta sliding table for it that greatly improves dealing with any wide pieces, but it's definitely not the equal of a Felder, for example.

I would be hard pressed to justify the space for a euro-style slider. I usually have the sliding table off unless I am doing a job that requires it because of the floor space it takes up.

I don't know - I've never had the budget for a nice saw. I've come close a few times, but something else comes up.

If you are spending $2000 on a saw spending $300 on a third party guard to go with it isn't such big deal. The cheap saws often are not even strong enough to attach the nice guard if you would spend the money.

The guard on my table saw mostly serves as a reminder to keep my fingers away from it. I don't expect it would actually prevent any sort of injury.

A good guard will prevent kickback and thus save you from injury. Fingers are an obvious risk of a say (and such accidents happen all the time), but kickback is the larger danger and the right guards will prevent that.

On my consumer grade Dewalt, the blade guard, riving knife, and kickback guard are all separate components, so I guess I was considering them separately. I still don't trust the kickback guard fully either, so attempt to stand off to the side if possible if I'm worried about kickback.

I agree, my jointer has a guard but you need to pull a little Allen key out to put the guard on/off. That little extra friction is enough I think. Someone needs to rabbet and never puts the guard back on.

Personally I like my digits, but I’m not in a production shop where every second counts, I just do this for myself and I make my living typing. I would tolerate any amount of friction to keep my fingers in the same configuration they are currently in.