A very good living can still be made with blue collar jobs, that have nothing to do with military or oil... a college degree at some point will help with career progression but to think you must spend 100k on a degree before you start work is a bad joke that the press and most of the public have bought hook line and sinker.

Electricians go to school fwiw. Getting your Journeyman's or Masters is no joke. It's not a doctorate at Harvard, but it does require some mental acuity.

The jobs you could perform mindlessly and still support a family are gone. There is still good livings to be had doing tradeskills, but they require more aptitude then they used to. To get and maintain an ASE license or Journeyman's license, you can't be a dummy.

Of note? - the primary source of training, both on and off the job, is gone as well (this is one of the things unions never get enough credit for.)

 

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ASE is a joke.
i saw a kid riding his bike to jiffylube, the other day, with an ASE patch on his jacket.

 

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A Master Automobile Technician makes a good living, despite your claim that ASE certs are a 'joke'.

 

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no they dont.
and thers no such thing as a master automobile tech despite what 60 mins tells you.
ASE certs are a joke, especially when i see a 20yo kid riding his bike to work at the jiffylube with an ase patch in his arm.

if you really want to make it in the automotive world, you get a mercury marine cert from the boating industry.
merc cert > ASE

part of the reason i left the auto industry was because these untrained kids would walk in off the street with 5 tools in their hands and try to tell me how to bleed brakes.
and then theyd go get their ase cert and flaunt it around like proof that they know everything.
half of them dont even know how a cooling system works, let alone a complex hydraulic system like brakes.

 

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