I don't mean this to sound challenging out all, I'm just kind of curious.
Under the broad umbrella of jobs-you-can-land-with-a-degree-containing-the-word-"computer", there are a great many that aren't making Facebook creepier, or making Gmail's interface worse, or other, similar, very high-paying jobs.
There are even, believe it or not, many that don't pay as well as not really understanding how to write code, but nonetheless somehow landing a position writing enterprise Java or DotNet at some boring bigcorp, then never leaving because you never actually get any better at programming than when you started, but these people don't seem to care and there are a few competent people here picking up your slack, so why risk going somewhere else? AKA the broad middle-tier of people working as software developers.
> Or maybe you're just in a rural area?
It's rural compared to the big coastal cities, but is still the third biggest city in my state. IMO, it shouldn't just be giant cities that experience economic growth, it should be everyone. The fact that this hasn't been the case in my area leaves me and many in my area bitter about the state of the economy.
Relocation isn't an option. My family lives here, my wife's family lives here, she has a career started here, and we can't afford the massive amount of instability that a move to a high COL area would bring.
Feel free to ask more questions. The more that rich people hear from folks like me, the more they'll understand the current political climate.
Suppose you could find a job elsewhere for $90k+. If you can't, sure, that's a good reason why relocation isn't an option, and finding a job in a location you don't live in is by no means easy. But if you can, then you ought to consider moving, by yourself (since your wife is busy with a career), live in an apartment with one or two other roommates, and live frugally saving/investing as much as you can. Make visits back home when you can, but at $90k+/yr that shouldn't be so hard, depends on how you want to balance your triple sized income. (Higher COL areas will eat into that, but living frugally, not very much.) Do this for 3-4 years, you'll have made more than 10 years at your current location and pay, handwaving away taxes/bonuses/raises/better opportunities. Then quit and relocate back, except now you have a savings cushion and it only cost you another few years of your time.
Sounds like you want to redistribute the economic gains? Good luck with that, we know where that leads. Economic inequality is fine if people are also raised out of poverty, like over a billion people have been since 1990 while inequality has raised. Inequality can be a good sign. (http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html)
At the very least, America can't have it both ways, being an economic power house and evenly redistributing the fruits internally. You might have a shot if you require Americans roll back into a farming economy where half the population farms for each other and the other half, but you'll have to kill a lot of people and take and salt a lot of land and forbid a lot of machinery to get it done. I don't think that's why Trump got elected. The voters don't tend to want handouts, they just want certain existing handouts to other parties to go away so they can effectively compete again in certain domains. Dissatisfaction with the economy in their area is a big component, sure, and Trump actually cares about making the country's economy better, and he's already done good things to help some areas out, but neither he nor anyone else will ever make e.g. all the state capitals equally economically viable with similar growth rates. Physics is against them, math is against them, human nature is against them, morality is against them. SV and other tech hubs will pass one day, too, just like the ghost towns you can visit all over the western states albeit probably not so dramatically, but that'll just be because the economic centers have moved elsewhere, not because they've been redistributed. Exploit their opportunities while they're there.
IT support in a rural area is more or less what I was suspecting (yes, Springfield is Country). It's ironic that the tech age was supposed to bring in an era of telecommuting, when in fact it's brought in an era of greatly increased centralization. Small towns needed doctors and lawyers, they don't need software developers or high end tech support.
In theory the increase in cloud services could change that, but I don't really see the trend changing.
I do find it ironic for a commenter to be surprised at a lower-wage worker reading a thread about, per the title, blue collar wages. (And that a thread with such a title inevitably turns into a discussion of programmer wages ;-)
With the move to digital when rigor and having tech people who really know there shit Is now important they don't want to pay the rate.