Ive recently went through a bunch of major renovation projects. Finding good trades people is impossible. Anyone available sucks. Anyone with good recommendation is booked for months and charge whatever they want.
You might want to think about this type of comment a bit more next time, as it can come across as quite condescending. One of the main points the article makes is that the older people have had it generally good in the past for employment/standard of living, etc. and the younger generations are being screwed by the older ones. In the comment above I read it as saying that the younger generation should be there to service you.
Painters don't get payed much of a wage for what is hard work if you've ever tried to paint a large space. Neither do many laborers. The ones that do have to deal with risk of death or injury that office jobs generally don't have to.