re: When did society start looking down on blue collar jobs?

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Go to trade school and make 45K digging other people's shite out of a septic tank when it's 25 degrees outside.

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I know some plumbers who make well over 100k. They are always in high demand, and there is currently a shortage of them. Same with Mechanics.

Anyone who is above average at their blue collar trade and has good money/business/customer skills will lap 99% of college degree workers several times over. You can make a shite ton of money (no pun intended) in pluming for example as an owner.

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Own your own business after 10 years or so and make damn good money while doing mostly office work

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If you are capable of running your own business you were capable of going to college, most likely, and project to have had the opportunity to make more.

You have to keep the populations you're discussing straight. Lots of intelligent people end up in trades and can scale that up over time, but they were always in the cohort that could do college (and make $ after) as well.

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If you are capable of running your own business

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that's the big "if," a lot of tradesmen get good at their craft and start getting the big head and say "why should(owner of company) get all the $? I'm doing all of the work!" but few have the skills to run a successful bidness

It’s not that they are looked down upon, society just never adjusted to the developing labor gap and relative attractiveness of blue collar jobs that would come with shifting supply. We keep sending kids to college blindly assuming there are jobs available. It’s a supply flood.

It used to be a foregone conclusion, you don’t have to break your back in the white collar arena and you make more money.

A good quality tradesman these days can name their price and stay busy. That hasn’t always been the case. It’s clear we have sent too many kids and to college and that blindly advising a youngster to go this route is not good for the individual or collective.

Universities have continued raising their prices while producing too much product. All else equal, they should be bearing the risk of all of this. We all know for many reasons, they are shielded from absorbing the financial hit, at least for now.

This is a subject I could ramble on forever. But if I could summarize with one point: everyone has different skills and flows in their life and should be encouraged to accommodate those rather doing what would have worked best for a generation or two behind us.

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plumber, electrician, mechanic,

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Real jobs.

Education system is an echo chamber of bad ideas for 75% of schools

It seems to have started around the 70s as more scholarships and grants allowed more students to get into college. Towards the end of the 70s and through the 90s (maybe even into the 00s) the push was "you need a college degree to get a decent job," thus the other way of saying that is "any job you get without a college degree is obviously not going to be worth anything."

No one took the time to understand how Supply and Demand can impact the labor market. Flash-forward a few decades and now we have people getting into tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for degrees which start out below $40k/yr while many trade school degrees are a fraction of the cost but can get you into jobs that start out at far higher pay.

We're at least a good 15-20 years from the time when the prevalent mindset about blue collar work was that it wasn't as worthwhile as white collar work.

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CNC Machinist

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Those are a dying breed. We had one of our best leave the company and start a machine shop just catering quick turn prototype jobs. That dude is clearing a million a year easy.

I was talking to one of the mechanics recently, and asked him “What is the deal with these long wait times?”

I thought he would blame it all on Biden and the “supply chain issues.” But he explained that cars are becoming more difficult to repair, because of the electronics, and there has been a severe lack of skilled labor who is able to repair them quickly and effectively. He explained that less people want to be mechanics when they finish high school, and/or even college.

I agree that society today does indeed wrongfully look down on these professions. Unfortunately, no child, growing up, says, “I want to be a mechanic or plumber,” when actually they are more high paying and more honorable than a lot of white collar positions.