Or, we could just pay semiconductor work for what it is, producing the most advanced technology on the planet. $250,000 in 2023 dollars is about what my father

Or, we could just pay semiconductor work for what it is, producing the most advanced technology on the planet. $250,000 in 2023 dollars is about what my father made as a power lineman in 1970, at $15 an hour. It was a well paid, union trade. But we need to put this in perspective. People don’t want to work for less than a blue collar job was worth in the 70s. Housing prices (on average) are not that high, wages are ridiculously low in real terms. The average home price in 2023 is about 350,000 in the USA, about 44,000 in 1970s dollars. That’s 1.5-3 years wages as a journeyman tradesman in 1970s dollars, if she were paying the cash equivalent of 350k for a house. Of course housing was both typically smaller and much more cheaply built in 1970, and for 350k today you are getting twice the square footage, and a much higher quality structure. Since an average home in 1970 would have been around half the size and 1/3 the price in inflation adjusted dollars, I think it’s safe to say that the thing that has changed here is primarily that wages are simply not enough to incentivise workers. Any skilled job that doesn’t pay at least 250k is simply not worth investing the time and effort to get the skills for. COVID gave people a chance to step back and value their time, interrupting the zombie death march toward slave wages. Now capital needs to readjust its expectations of how much they will have to pay to extract 90 percent of the surplus value of a persons life.