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Comment by logicx24 | Hacker News Reader

If the world really needs more escalator mechanics, then salaries for them will rise commensurate to demand and people will train to become escalator mechanics. Until then, they'll continue with other pursuits that are more profitable to them. This is how things have always been, unless you want to reinstitute medieval guilds, and I don't see a problem with it.

Generally, campaigning to make people to do something out of a sense of moral propriety is the wrong approach to creating change.

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You are assuming that the world is well ordered and that all things will balance like that, but it isn't. People don't see those jobs as options, they aren't even aware of the opportunities, and there is social stigma against being in the trades. Even if you make a nice living in the trades, you will take a hit to your social identity, making you less attractive to others. That's how toxic our culture is right now. People don't value good work anymore, they value branding and image. And we are going to collapse because of it.

I assure you that if the job is paying enough people will drop any social stigma against trades jobs right away. I'll pick a paid off nice house over showing off to my friends. Although I'm sure the new house is much easier to show off than an office job.

I have talked to people working hard physical labor jobs and they make hardly more than I do as a junior/mid level web dev but they are doing back breaking work 6 days a week.

The national shortage of truck drivers in America does not support your argument. I heard from someone at 160 Driving Academy that you can make six figures with a CDL and the trucking companies will pay you to get one.

That's not even as hard on the body as other physical jobs. It is not a well regarded and the community of peers you interact with means that it isn't a very desirable job.

Yeah sure, you can make that after you are in the business for years, own your own truck, have a flawless record, and all that. What they don't mention is you not going home at the end of the day, or the hours you don't get paid waiting for other people to unload your or load your truck, or the social isolation, or the fact that a small misstep could cost you your entire career with your CDL and driving experience becoming useless.

The reason we lack truck drivers is because of pay, it costs a lot of money to get people to forgo a family, or a home, or sleeping in their own bed, waiting around in the middle of nowhere not getting paid just waiting, plus the costs of road food, the cost of maintaining and insuring your own truck, ect.

No, just no. I have a couple truck drivers in my family and the average truck driver does not make anywhere near that. The median salary for truck drivers was $42,480 per year in 2017 per the BLS.

It's also a pretty shit job.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/m...

There also is not a truck driver shortage

https://www.businessinsider.com/truck-driver-shortage-not-re...

Truck driving is the most mind numbing job I could imagine. But if someone was offering to pay $200,000 in my city I would take the job until I made enough to pay off my house and then unless they could significantly increase the pay or reduce hours I would leave for something else.

Also everything I have heard from truck drivers makes it sound not so great at all. They are under constant pressure to keep driving even while tired and are constantly gps tracked for performance metrics.

The guy at the driving academy might not be the most neutral source of information. Is that $100k before or after you buy a semitruck? How much does a truck cost? How often do you see your family?

That’s for union jobs, which are limited and totally nepotistic. Non-union truckers make substantially less.

> I heard from someone at 160 Driving Academy that you can make six figures with a CDL and the trucking companies will pay you to get one.

I remember visiting the Daily News (a NYC local newspaper) in the early 2000s and on the tour learned that the unionized delivery guys could make six figures. That was almost 20 years ago. The fact that the same salary as 20 years ago is still possible doesn't really say much.

It is possible to make 6 figures driving a truck but not very likely.

I disagree about there being a social stigma about the trades. It might tend to be seen more frequently among certain age groups or geographic locations but I can't recall ever seeing people be thought of that way for having a skilled trades job (I'm in the US).

Quite the contrary actually, I think they're seen as very hard working. But I've also never seen very much in the way of recommendations from others in that trade to get into that kind of work. Probably because there are few people to do the recommending. There's certainly no shortage of freshman brogrammers who will preach a career in software development as easy money (they'll change their tune when they see the ugly side of things but that's a different topic of discussion).

It isn't so much a stigma as it is a lack of advocates for trade and an abundance of advocates for white collar work. It would be naive to think there isn't some classism that causes this.

Relax. Why do you expect a bunch of escalator mechanics to be on standby, readily available for a once in a generation escalator repair project? That's not how things work.

> And we are going to collapse because of it.

It's not that bad.

When we are electing the president by the same principle, I assure you that it is even worse than you can imagine. Societal collapse is imminent. Those who are comforted by their station in life always think they are living in a utopia. You are surrounded by fake smiles adorning people forced into subservience. At one time the myth that hard work and dedication would pay off in the end kept people in line, the "american dream" they called it. Now that myth has been tempered by reality, watching the last generation work all their lives with many having little to their names and no security is what looms over the current generation. We know it's a lie. That lie was keeping things together. We are heading into an age of great civil brawling fueled by immense economic pressure caused by corruption on all fronts.

I agree! Let’s all wear flannel and be slackers!

You’re doing a throw back to the nineties comment, right?

Haha, yeah you could pluck that comment out of any decade and find (insane)people saying it.

It's also usually true.

well that escalated quickly

Your narrative is not actually evidence (even if I suspect you may in fact be right).

The evidence is in crumbling infrastructure, poor provision of essential social investment, and increasing political and social extremism.

Short-term greed turns out to be a ridiculously naive, stupid, and short-sighted way to run an economy.

Basically you have to beat people with the truth for people to accept it when it goes against their ill-conceived view of the world.

This is such a shockingly naive worldview, but I see it almost every day.

Solving needs and reaping rewards have become disconnected - this is the exact problem we're discussing here.

In fact, solutions and rewards have become opposites in some cases, so it is more profitable to create problems than to solve them. This has become a significant portion of the economy across many sectors, but especially in advertising.

It's about more than profit. People have been encouraged to seek fullfilment in their work and so chase their dreams through university and plonk out the end with a piece of paper that doesn't make them money. It wouldn't occur to many people to do work outside of their degree because otherwise what was the point of the degree?

If it were about profit everyone would work in remote mines or offshore drilling platforms from 18 until they couldn't anymore.

That assumes perfect knowledge. How many of you have ever stopped to check what an escalator mechanic makes?

You don’t need to assume perfect knowledge. There’s a reason the rich areas in town are all filled with doctors/lawyers/financiers/tech workers/engineers. They’re healthier, have better work hours, have more time and opportunity to move up the system. Anyone can see this, they would be stupid not to wish the same for their children.

And to to put one’s body in the way of significant harm, and work late night hours and give up your social life, anyone who has the option of doing something else is going to want quite a bit of premium. Not just $80k/year. Same goes for needing someone in rural areas.

I know several elevator mechanics. It pays well, very well. Also is a very dangerous job.

Its a special kind of personality. You need to be mechanically handy, and have some electronics and software sense as well. I suspect if more people were aware of what it paid, they would go for it, if they were willing to put up with hazards.

So what does it pay then?

How much dues it pay?

BLS says $80K/year.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/mobile/e...

Not bad for a high-school education only, but when other people are millionaires because they happened to get into Bitcoin in 2011 or because they picked the right tech startup, I see why folks would rather put their efforts into getting lucky.

What a beautiful, efficient world. Sadly, what one can do instead is not budget enough for escalator mechanics, complain that the escalator mechanic union is unreasonable or that there is a skills shortage, then let the escalators break down.

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