There were entire generations told diplomas were the only path to success and only "stupid people or drop outs" would do trades or jobs without a degree. Anecdotally speaking, most of the people I know who have jobs paying enough to purchase a house are in the trades, and most of them have phenomenal job security due to being hard to replace with another worker.
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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For the last 18 years I've owned a business that does events on college campuses, so I've talked to literally thousands of college students about their majors and future career plans. Over the years I've seen zillions of Software Development majors, or similar, and we always talked about how they'll always have a safe career.
Apparently, we were all wrong.
The trades have always been about becoming a manager before your body gives out. The former often involve an MBA.
There is a lot to be said about a high demand job. But people weren't stupid nor did they forget about plumbers. They wanted better for their kids. They wanted them to be white collar.
Some people aren't great at white collar positions. I work trades and my boss's grandson is a teen who is very smart and works hard on some jobs, but he struggles in school. White collar positons for people with high energy or long term focus issues can be difficult for them. We aren't able to let the robots do everything yet so we still need people to work trades. Schools should be providing quality pathways to both.
I think the bigger issue with the trades is the overtime culture and excessive hours most of them face. With better hours with the same pay i think the whole industry and workers standards would benefit.
Maybe we should not be dependent on exploitive labor to meet our basic needs.
No this is Republican bs. We’ve all been sold the idea that college is only for earning more money, so anything that threatens that means we have too many people going to college?
Think about how long it’s been since 12 years have been the expected base level of education. I’m not going to look it up but it’s been a long time. Now think about how society has changed, even within your lifetime. It’s gotten way more complicated, being able to think has gotten more valuable. everything has gotten more complex, from getting news to voting to bill paying to transportation to pretty much every job. How can we really think the same base level of education is ok?
Current politics is a great example why our base level of education needs to be raised.
Let’s add two years to everyone’s education. We already have the institutions: community college, trade and votech schools, apprenticeships, etc. It’s about time that further education becomes expected. Learn a job, learn to think, improve your potential, while also improving your ability to exist in our society, and improve our society overall. This is our future. This is one of the roads to make america great. Everyone needs 14 years of school as a base level and we will all benefit
My state made those extra two years free for most people, to improve overall public education. Time to make it so for everyone
Corporations not hiring*
Why hire expensive college grads when cheap AI is just as good, works 24/7, and doesn’t complain about long working hours and terrible working conditions?
this makes me think... we need to train AI to unionize.
Teamsters++
Stop reading Fortune.
Respec into the trades wouldn't fix anything either, because it would just as well flood those fields with labor supply and obliterate the wages and union protections there.
The problem isn't just that some people are unemployed, it's that many/most people are unemployable - there is no price at which their work is productive enough for them to be paid enough to buy even the product they themselves made or any other product for that matter.
There's simply no way to create that equilibria again, because we've reached in many ways a dead end to our technological development to where the only way to further optimize and make tech viable economically is not via expensive, risky R&D ventures but with workforce reductions and legal loopholes that extract money from the poors i.e. Uber and even then - only low interest rates and resulting bloated stocks built on the house of cards of international trade and lies and investor financial manipulation / game of hot potato created the wealth that permitted low prices, all the while most of the resultant inflation went into assets held by the rich, not wages of the poor.
That's why fascism is rising, there's no productive capital left to buy to make money, only to cash out to exchange for power.
As I keep saying (and many refute me):
Everything has been invented. The plateau was reached around 2014 ish. There is no new thing that will benefit us technologically (medically, there probably is, but corps dont want us to find cures when cancer makes them trillions of dollars).
Hence the rise of technofacism, surveillance states, and never ending ads. Thats all thats left.
This isn't technology though, you're conflating tech with products. Tech hasn't stopped going strong, you just don't see a packages product at the end of it because of the capitalist race to the bottom making almost everything non-predatory unviable.
I mean, there's too many people in general. The earth can only handle so much.
Still, sucks for the young gen.