Socialism for sane people
I interned at a company doing tradie shit, I've done freelance work, and my current job is kind of sort of almost but not quite tradie shit.
I would fucking love to have an office job that made no physical demands of me to be perfectly honest. Grass is always greener I guess.
I've got a foot in both worlds, I have an IT education but have worked in or around skilled labor most of my adult life. Part of my current job even deals with training and evaluating people doing skilled labor.
In my experience, two kinds of people tend to do well enough to be described as thriving. Those who've worked with their hands before, either professionally or as a hobby, and those who approach the job with some humility and a mindset of wanting to learn and perfect a craft, similar to many artists.
It doesn't matter what your background is, white collar, blue collar, no collar, if you're overconfident and think a trade is going to be easy because you don't respect the mental and the physical aspects of the job, you're going to have a bad time.
In fairness, I think there are probably a lot of white-collar people who could survive in the trades, but very few would actually thrive.
Most people currently in the trades aren't thriving either.
As a trade jacker, it's possible, but a lot of work learning how to do things on the fly. You also need the tools.
Yea well my escape plan is a pot farm