Lol you sound like the guys who five years ago were saying no home would need gigabit speeds. "Your 10/100 fast ethernet is more than any home network will ever need!"

As more people drop cable television in favor of streaming: every TV, computer, phone, game system, etc.. will be using the network at the same time. Wireless may never be able to keep up with the reliability and stability ethernet offers and the bandwidth we're going to be using soon. The 2.4ghz spectrum is already overloaded, the 5ghz spectrum will soon be just as overloaded. Sure 5ghz can in theory do a gigabit --though we know it is nowhere near that in the real world -- but the range is atrocious compared to the lower frequencies. Imagine a house in a busy neighborhood with 20 houses trying to share the same spectrum, one of the houses has 4 screens streaming 4k, little Becky is Skyping with her boyfriend, little Johnny streams his favorite Twitch broadcaster while streaming his own gameplay at the same time. Wireless? lol.

MoCA networking is taking off because people are sick of wireless and they aren't willing to pay the costs to upgrade the cabling inside their walls. New construction in developments are dropping cat6 in every room.

Intel is promising 10gig ethernet cards for less than $100 soon, you can already pick them up for about $150.

I'm not saying it is happening tomorrow, if I had to guess, I'd say 3-5 years and it'll be as common as gigabit is now.

You can say the cost isn't worth it, but, if you're building $100,000 house, your walls are open, and its an extra $100 to run cat6, the choice is obvious. And you can call it a delusion, but, people said the same thing about going to ISDN, then DSL, then cable internet, they're saying it now about going with google fiber. Personally, to expect anything other than speeds to increase is delusional.

Do you realize how silly it sounds to say "10GigE is almost exclusively data center...and that's where it will stay." You sound like a crazy person.

The average college graduate has around $30,000 of debt, hardly hundreds of thousands.

The average trade school graduate has $10,000 of debt.

Given that college grads have significantly higher salaries, and significantly more horizontal and vertical movement potential, I'd hardly say that a college degree is not worth it.

Now, I would like to point out that we need to manage our expectations of lifestyle from a college degree. As I've said in other posts, a college degree does not guarantee the creepy suburban life, the mcmansion, the gas guzzling SUV, the stepford wife, and the soccer kids.

We need to lower our expectations of what middle class is. The US is no longer living in the illusion bubble of the 90s and 00s. Maybe we need to realize that college has never ever guaranteed a lifestyle of 3 cars, a garage for every car, a cell-phone for our 8 year old, and whatever stupid clothing accessory is $1000 that season.

If we can come to the realization that since most college graduates are not part of the .01%, we still have to *gasp* toil away and work hard to earn someone else money, then maybe people will stop bitching and moaning about how their philosophy degree got them a job in a coffee shop.

If we insist on going anecdotal: off the top of my head I know 2 plumbers, 1 is a master plumber, the other is a journeyman; 2 electricians, 1 master, 1 journeyman; and a certified mechanic. All are unemployed, drug-free, no criminal record, impeccable work ethics, and struggling to find work.

I'm not saying everyone should go to college and no one should learn a skill, quite the opposite. There are certainly people who should not go to college, some people just don't have the desire, the drive, or sometimes the ability. Many of my cousins and uncles are tradesmen of various flavors and they're very happy. I know quite well that people can earn an ok living doing blue collar/trade work.

My point is, skipping college and jumping straight into the workforce does not guarantee you a job either. People struggle for jobs at every education level. Drop-outs, G.E.D, High School, Tradesmen, Associates, Bachelors, Masters, etc... there are folks who can't find jobs, whether its unfortunate locations, bad timing, over saturated markets, weather related, laziness, or just plain unlucky.

We should encourage people to go in any one of those directions, including college.

We also need to make it clear that none of those directions guarantees the standard of living that you may expect. There are many factors that play into whether or not your expectations are met.

One thing is certainly clear, people seem reluctant or scared to jump across their caste like barriers. College educated are scared to become tradesmen and tradesmen are scared to go to college. Back to anecdotes, but, a friend of mine from high school started out as a certified mechanic, worked for a few years, went to the university, a bachelors degree later he runs a really successful chain of repair shops. Conversely, a college friend of mine graduated with an accounting degree, hated accounting, went back to her passion of woodworking, worked building cabinets for a few years and started her own custom cabinet company, mansions from around the country now have her cabinets installed.

One thing is undeniably clear though, your options with a college degree are far greater than without. No one can reasonably deny that. It doesn't mean that you'll be a millionaire, but your horizontal and vertical mobility opens up tremendously.

Just to hammer this point home:
I think we need to manage expectations of what our education paths will and will not offer us. They will not guarantee us a job. They will not guarantee us the creepy suburban life, gas guzzling SUV, the Stepford wife, and preppy soccer kids. They will not guarantee us a job which trivially requires an uncomfortable suit. However they will offer us different options, and depending on which route or routes we take, we may have more options available to us if we're willing to work for them.

And I know lots of unemployed skilled laborers... Anecdotes don't change anything.

A lot of workers -- both white collar and blue collar -- in the US are struggling to find employment.

This whole idea of not going to college because it doesn't guarantee a job thing is ridiculous. You aren't guaranteed a job without a degree either. At least with a degree you have a chance at upward mobility. And an educated society is certainly better than an uneducated society. As a society, we're far better off with an educated population than we are with an uneducated population.

Now, if we want to discuss expectations from a degree, that is a different story, but I was mainly referring to this delusion that, as a society, we're losing skilled laborers, thats just nonsense. There are plenty of uneducated people in the US, and they also go through the same issues of not being able to find a job.

You brought up having to commute a long distance to get to work, for the low pay of a laborer, relocating and commuting are often just not really options.

I understand the urge to say that more people should go into blue collar jobs and not college, but the fact of the matter is: there is a shortage of blue collar jobs as well. Plumbers, construction workers, electricians, etc... have a hard time finding jobs as well as college educated people looking for white collar jobs.
If most of the people who have college degrees had skipped college, we would be in the same situation we are now but with a bunch of uneducated unemployed people.
Personally, I'd rather have an educated populace struggling to find jobs rather than an uneducated one.

Im sorry but, no. Just no. I dont mean to come across as rude but that advice is just madness. In new construction do not put cat5e lol. Cat6 is not any more difficult to work with than cat5e. Particularly with new construction cat6 is the absolute minimum anyone should run. He/she will likely already have an electrician running it through conduit anyway. Cat5e? wtf.. I just ran 43 jacks in my house, guest house, and two out buildings in cat6a (Chose 6a due to some of the runs being further than the 55 meter limitation on 10G) and once the electrician had them snaked through the walls, a friend and i were able to get all keystone jacks and patch panels punched down in a couple of casual pizza and beer nights, and it was our first time doing it. Every single jack works and the network has been solid as a rock. If your walls are already open, spend the lousy few hundred dollars and get at least cat6, at least. By far the most expensive cost, labor, will stay close to the same. 10gigabit is closer than you think. Particularly if 4k video comes along. Do it right when the walls are open and feel the sweet relief of knowing you wont have to open them up anytime in the near future.

You're just flat out living in denial if you don't believe advertising is powerful in convincing people -- of all education and class levels -- to consume in order to feel more adequate. I'm not sure how things work in delusional land, but over here in reality, advertising drives a huge chunk of our economy, because it extremely effective. It works, well.

And by the way, I'm far from living in poverty. Good life, good education, good job, and reality based, not some delusional nutbag who imagines advertising doesn't have a major impact on culture lol.

Yes, we should all do the right thing financially all the time, but, it doesn't take a genius to see that isn't happening. You don't even have to search very hard to see that people from every class and every education level fucks up their finances, the uneducated hardly have a monopoly on overspending and debt. In fact, a large chunk of Americas educated upper and middle class are in debt up to their ears.

Have fun out there in fantasyland, take care.

Some of us aren't. A number of us are fighting the good fight, we're facing strong opposition though. Entrenched beliefs stuck back decades, luddites, fans of the Kardashians, big money corporate interests, bought and sold politicians, etc..

We're trying though, I promise.

Lol it's hilarious the way these guys incessantly use 'special snowflake' and 'entitlement'

As if 'special snowflake', being different or wanting something different from everyone else is a bad thing. I'd wear the special snowflake badge happily. It means I'm not exactly the same as every other person near me. How dare we think of different uses for tech or imagine that some things in the world might *gasp* change *gasp* to work for others as well.

Throwing around entitlement means, accept everything as it is, there's nothing that needs to change, ever.

Really what it all means is, they don't like that people are actually doing things to fix the world around them. They're luddites and change terrifies them.

Its OK guys, everything will be ok. Not too long ago people were scared the Large Hadron Collider was going to swallow the universe. People were scared because the negro was going to be freed. People were scared women would be able to vote. Change is hard little buddies, but it'll all be OK *headpat* *hair ruffle*

Publicity stunt or not, his people are still getting 70k minimum per year.

And he still raised the minimum salary to 70k! Good for him!

You're definitely correct. We should say no. Do realize though, part of the reason our culture has become so attached to buying things that dont enhance our lives, at all, is due to advertising and media selling a lifestyle that is beyond most people.

Saying we can all just say no is spot on, but, look at the influence the media has on teenagers and how it causes them to attach their selfworth to useless brand names. Or look at the history of diamonds and see the crazy way one advertising firm turned an basically unknown stone --diamonds-- into the universal symbol of love in less than 50 years.

The media has played a large role in convincing giant chunks of our population they need $300 and up purses and tons of other useless trash. And it is usually attached to a brand name, not the rarity or quality of materials it is made from. The Louis Vuitton company could slap their name on a white hanes T-shirt and sell it for a hundred bucks.
A large part of societies self worth is attached to the things they own or want to own.

Exactly. This.

You can try go AC all you like, it is still pretty obvious you're the same nutter from before.

Because it isn't 1950 anymore, both parents tend to work nowadays. Glad to see you finally noticed.