Being wealthy is better than being poor, and being able to pay for college is better than working in construction. However, when choosing a specialty it is important to consider one's preferences. If your child don't want to be a lawyer it doesn't matter whether you can afford paying for the degree, and if he insists he would rather be fixing cars than dealing with documents, helping with a student loan is not really the best thing you can offer as a parent.
The part about blue collar jobs being inherently more deadly doesn't feel right to me. For one, I want to believe we have collectively gotten better in avoiding "dumb" deaths and injuries, these, that could have been prevented by inventing and following safety procedures. The health risks certain profession implies is certainly to be considered when choosing one, white collars included. Desk job kills slowly, but surely.
So, answering to the title, which doesn't seem to be related to the article contents, I absolutely do. Qualified engineer knows enough to be able to double off as a technician, and missing monthly payments is much scarier than high voltage, so if my entire job field was to become obsolete due to AI or any other reason, I would absolutely consider getting out of desk and getting my hands dirty.
You're probably not counting all the overhead, particularly from heavy equipment. Skidsteers, dump trailers, stump grinders, as well as all the oversized/towing capable trucks to haul those machines around. All of that equipment needs maintenance and fuel, as well.
The expensive part is usually just showing up ready to work, with a marginal cost for each additional tree. If you had 15 trees taken down in one day, the cost per tree would work out to seem much more reasonable.
My neighbors were having a bunch of tree work done, and I asked the supervisor what it would cost to take a big dead one down on my property. I planned to do it myself, so I had a strong haggling position, and I got him to $400, which felt worth it to save me a day's worth of hard labor. If they weren't already onsite with all the gear, that would've been $2K+ easy.
cleartext412 · · focus · HN ↗
The part about blue collar jobs being inherently more deadly doesn't feel right to me. For one, I want to believe we have collectively gotten better in avoiding "dumb" deaths and injuries, these, that could have been prevented by inventing and following safety procedures. The health risks certain profession implies is certainly to be considered when choosing one, white collars included. Desk job kills slowly, but surely.
So, answering to the title, which doesn't seem to be related to the article contents, I absolutely do. Qualified engineer knows enough to be able to double off as a technician, and missing monthly payments is much scarier than high voltage, so if my entire job field was to become obsolete due to AI or any other reason, I would absolutely consider getting out of desk and getting my hands dirty.
dj_gitmo · · focus · HN ↗
bookofjoe · · focus · HN ↗
briHass · · focus · HN ↗
The expensive part is usually just showing up ready to work, with a marginal cost for each additional tree. If you had 15 trees taken down in one day, the cost per tree would work out to seem much more reasonable.
My neighbors were having a bunch of tree work done, and I asked the supervisor what it would cost to take a big dead one down on my property. I planned to do it myself, so I had a strong haggling position, and I got him to $400, which felt worth it to save me a day's worth of hard labor. If they weren't already onsite with all the gear, that would've been $2K+ easy.
bookofjoe · · focus · HN ↗