| I’m speaking as a (non commercial) builder, not a buyer. I don’t doubt that contractors are charging more than 150 a foot. But I know what materials cost and I know how many man hours it takes to build. Some areas are having real struggles with finding construction workers though. We can thank the devaluation of trades training in schools and the ridiculous notion that college is for everyone for that mess. Being a skilled tradesperson is a great career option for a lot of people, often the same people that end up stuck in retail or some other hellish profession after going to college and maybe even graduating. Their lives would be probably much better in trades, they would earn 4x as much, probably be in better shape, and have a much higher level of personal autonomy. Unfortunately, someone somewhere along the road convinced them that blue collar work was below them. It’s one of the principles I used when I was raising children: a trade is something you can do anywhere that everyone needs. You own your own tools, you can show up anywhere and provide an essential service irrespective of the economic conditions autonomously and on your own terms. Professions tend to be much more dependent on complex societal structures and institutions, tend to be more geographically restricted, and tend to be more restrictive to personal choices. Some vocations can straddle both categories. With my children, I made sure each of them had the fundamentals of at least one trade that they found interesting by the time they were 16. It has served them well even though they have all ended up pursuing more entrepreneurial and technology or media related fields. |