About that electrician, by the way ...

Master electricians are some of the most highly paid tradespeople in the United States, generally possessing at least as much specialized knowledge as a college graduate. By tradition, however, they acquire their specialized knowledge on the job and through formal education that is not part of the college/university system.

Not all electricians are highly paid, but a significant percentage of them make more money than a typical college graduate. Some of them make more money than people with postgraduate degrees.

Disrespect for the trades in the United States is a big deal. Electricians, machinists, welders and others who do critical, specialized work that keeps our economy humming are often looked down on as "less than" despite their specialized knowledge and hard-to-acquire skills.

Why? A big part of it is a traditional American disdain of manual labor. Some of that is racist in origim; the paradigm comes down to us from racist attitudes that masters do the thinking while inferior people do the doing.

I write this from my perspective as a college educated person who ran factories for a living, and who frequently found myself at the mercy of critically skilled tradespeople with specialized knowledge ... who were in very short supply.

They may have lacked formal university education, but they laughed all the way to bank, as it were.