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Considering the average wage is also includes part time work, and lots of non-skilled jobs, AKA student jobs which drag the average down. I should hope a skille
by UK-AL 15y ago
Considering the average wage is also includes part time work, and lots of non-skilled jobs, AKA student jobs which drag the average down. I should hope a skilled full time worker, would earn significantly more than the average wage considering they have to support a family.
There are tons of dodgy plumbing and electrician scam schools(http://www.plumbing-school.co.uk/ http://www.plumbing-school.co.uk/), which perpetuate the myth of 50K+ wages. It's in their interest, and it's entirely false. You end with a crappy nvq and no work but they get government grants to train you. I wish people would actually do the research.
You also have to separate wages, and profits when talking about this. Wages are what you can sell your labour for, to other companies relatively risk free. However profits require risk. Most of these high achieving plumbers money comes from the profit his company makes and not via his wages. That's why they always mention their self employed.
What this means, you have to run business and take a lot of risk in order to get that sort of money as a plumber. You could end up bankrupt, and that would not happen via wages. While educated people can obtain a lot of money with relatively little risk via wages. For example the barclay brothers took on enormous risk in order to get where they were. While someone who went to oxbridge and then into a Investment banking graduate scheme doing underwriting took on relatively little risk. They will probably never be at risk of having their home taken away, and being declared bankrupt. However the barclay brothers had to use massive amounts of leverage(Mortgages, Business loans etc) and risk to come from home decorators to owning a business empire.
I also have to mention intelligence is fluid - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15369851 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15369851. Trying to work out who's smart and who's not is difficult. Achievers may end being terrible, dumb kids may end up being pretty smart over the course of a lifetime.
I know lots of people who went to new universities, who have very good jobs(At my work place). Some of them went onto old universities to complete MSc and MBA degrees and ended up with distinctions. Don't be so small minded, it's like you've been reading right wing tabloid press.
- Silhouette 15y agoPlease remember that you brought the distinction between wages and other forms of financial benefit into the discussion, not me. All I'm saying is that someone skilled in a useful trade can make a decent living without being pushed down the academic route. Of course those who go into business for themselves will have to risk more but can achieve higher returns; that's true in almost any industry. And of course there are snake oil salesmen offering worthless "training" or "credentials"; that's true in almost any industry as well. But high incomes for freelance tradesmen aren't the myth you claim them to be; multiple people who've done work on my home within the past couple of years are an existence proof of well-compensated tradesmen, and others were quoting similar rates. As for fluid intelligence, perhaps things do change at different times for different people, but I don't think I'm going to set aside the general expectation that smart kids will do better if they are challenged at school based on one study of about 30 kids where a few of them moved significantly in one direction or the other between the ages of 14 and 18. I don't see why the two hypotheses are incompatible anyway.