re: Mike Rowe highlight with Bill Maher last night.

quote:

---

He discussed the amounts that tradesmen can earn.

---

Can being the operative word there.

quote:

---

It's a lot.

---

Not relative to what you can earn in a lot of other fields.

These threads always revolve around a fundamental misrepresentation of how many of these high-paying trades jobs there are, how difficult it is to get them, the experience and training required, the entry costs to enter those fields and pay out of pocket for tools, classes, certificates, licences, etc, how much of that high pay comes from OT and time and a half, etc, etc, etc. Half of all auto mechanics are making less than $48k and 90% are making less than $78k. Talking about the tiny fraction of auto mechanics who end up comfortably making six figures is like talking about the tiny fraction of high school theater kids who move to New York with $100 to their name and end up on Broadway.

Again, if a guy is such a genius that it's a done deal that he's automatically going to end up being in that 99.9th percentile, why not just go be a neurosurgeon?