[bombcar]

The trades are certainly not the panacea that some think them to be, and they have significant downsides (you very rarely see a roofer over 40, for example, that work is incredibly damaging).

But there's certainly a demand, and we need to get rid of the stigma that "a plumber" is somehow a dumber/worse person than "a lawyer".

The trades do relatively quickly get into "google salary" range, but they will rarely if ever reach "google stock grant" range. 15 years into being a plumber and you're probably managing multiple plumbers and could easily be netting $250k/yr or more.