Stromprophet on 12 March 2007
HappySqurriel said:
Well, when I first moved into Web-application development I was contracting out at $50 per hour (which, with how much I was working, put me in the $120,000 per year range); I'm currently working as an employee because I was advised that another year experience would make finding contracts earlier. I wouldn't have bought a PS3 when I was a contractor because I was saving for a house.
A couple of my friends younger brothers went up to the tar-sands to work (at 21) and are making (roughly) $150,000 per year; the unfortunate problem is they can't really afford a PS3 because being a roughneck is hard work and they don't want to do it for long (so they're saving every penny) and they pay $3000 per month on rent in Fort-Mac.
My point is, even if you're making a crap-load of money does not make something instantly inexpensive.
I don't know if the Europeans make more or less than in North America. Things tend to be more expensive there in general so I don't know that I'd want to live there. I've also heard there is unemployment in some countries that make it look like a depression.
Do you live in Canada Squirrel? I assume that's what you mean by the Tar-Sands.
You web programmers! You must have been living it up in the 90s. I work as a mechanical engineer right now and despite all that education the average salary for an ME has not gone up for a while. It was 45k Median in 2000. I got out in 2004 and got the job I wanted in 2005 making 45k a year. I wasn't a slouch either, I was like #2 or #3 in GPA in my class.
The job market got ridiculous after 9/11. And they outsourced a lot of the engineering jobs to India and China.
I had an offer to work for Slumberge down in Texas and I would be on Oil Rigs in the gulf and down in South America. I also have a minor in Spanish so this would have worked, but I have a pretty bad knee and I have trouble standing all day. I would have been on 18-hour shifts for 2 weeks then off 1 week, and then back on, and so on. It would have been nice though, they paid for housing and food. I would have saved a buttload, but it would have been terrible.
To the guy in France, I think they said something like 28% of American households make more than 250k a year. So yeah, there are a lot of rich people. America has 8 million millionares not counting the equity of their primary residence (meaning they have 1 million in cash, stock, or bonds).
Still, I wouldn't target the rich is I wanted to be successful with normal eletronic products.
