thinking about, building, and running a business is pretty much the only real future. This may look like becoming an expert and contracting oneself out, or it may look like finding a niche and exploiting it for all the market value it's worth.
Working for someone else has been the "easy" route (mentally) for a long time, and easy things never pay well.
I agree this is viable for some people. But it's structurally impossible for a sizeable portion of the population to do it. Our economy needs employees to run. It's not a question of easy/hard.
I'm fine with the norm. The norm is better than losing all hopes or a bleak future. The norm is a job that pays ordinary salary but gives me hope that I sharpen my skills and get rewarded accordingly (no guarantee, of course, but there's hope).
I'm grateful that STEM pays so well nowadays, but I don't mind if my pay goes back to norm in exchange for many people having a better future. I don't see the current K12 system will help, though.
Increase in STEM degrees does not have a causal effect on number of good jobs. Any hope that it does is about as speculative as "investing" in bitcoin or the next Gamestop pattern.
I live in Austria now and the market is flooded with STEM grads due to very good schools and free education to the point where, in my college town, I can't throw a rock out the window without hitting someone doing a PhD in ML, but that doesn't translate to an abundance of jobs due to the lack of VC funding in this area.
This leads to massive academic title inflation where, unless you already have job experience, most companies can afford to throw your resume in the bin if you don't have a MSc and stil have enough candidates to fulfill their demand, so your only choice if to pursue at least a MSc if you want to be employed.
Friends in Denmark have told me the same, you can easily find an Architect but good luck finding a plumber.
The truly sad part is it leads to broad financialization of Science. People up here making education into a personal problem (haves/havenots) are apparently "too smart" to see the social costs of heavy public investment in STEM education
Salaries are not determined by the value employees create on the downside. They are determined on the minimum by the minimum your employer can get away with paying you, which is a function of scarcity.
On the maximum, they are determined by value, in that your employer will never pay you more than the value you create (otherwise, why hire you?)
Working for someone else has been the "easy" route (mentally) for a long time, and easy things never pay well.