Building managers typically get free or cheap housing and make pretty good income, one way or another. Architects, plumbers, contractors, and others involved in

Building managers typically get free or cheap housing and make pretty good income, one way or another. Architects, plumbers, contractors, and others involved in building and maintaining offices don't do bad, either. These jobs are in high demand; watch Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe's TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm... Electricians and others who run wiring for new installations (I know several people who do this) all make pretty good money. The guys who work for utility companies fixing stuff after storms are unionized and make a comfortable living. Power companies themselves make money not only in the delivery of services but also in state-of-the-art energy trading. I have direct experience supervising road crews. Most states have a mandated minimum pay for road workers; even the guys holding the stop signs are making $16-22 an hour, and that was in Ohio, where the cost of living is about half of the Bay area. Public transit workers are also almost always unionized. Government workers (I interned at the County Engineer office) make salaries on-par with other knowledge workers and have generous retirement. The hardware is the major outlier here, but for the most part, the workers making your hardware are doing relatively well for themselves compared to their fellow citizens. And they are largely irrelevant when discussing income inequality in the US. The reality is that useful skills bring in good money. The people providing for your quality of life are doing pretty well for themselves and will always be in work. Being unskilled and being unable to provide real value is a problem without an easy solution. I feel that people should be ensured a base quality of life, but that's not free. If people didn't aspire to more, no one would have anything at all.