Or a self-employed architect with an engineering background. In my little podunk town, I had to recently pay $100/hr for an architect to draw up blueprints of an apartment complex I own. And the other guy wanted about $300 an hour.

Ultimately, if you are smart and dedicated, you can make almost any career field (mind you, career field, not specific job) very lucrative. I'm a business analyst. I make $30,000 a year. If I get good at it and become the next Michael Pachter, I make many multiples more than I do. Heck, at my job right now, I have colleagues with PHDs that make little more than I do for the inverse characteristic of not having the dedication to make right career choices.

DaBuddah - Its hard to define if a career at a certain salary is 'abundant' or not. I mean, any doctor that puts in the hours to become one in the US will find that there is little chance of making less than $100k. But that takes huge amounts of time and responsibility...It really comes down to the value proposition: 'Am I willing to put in X amount of time and dedicate to make Y salary?'. If your willing to put X into a 8-year doctorate degree, the chances are very high you would find a very high paying job as an attorney, doctor, psychiatrist, or other PHD-driven career.

And going further than that, I can assure you that if you are smart, you can find a career path to earn more than $100,000. You can do what I did and skip college, and use the time to build up smart investments. Despite not having a college education, I am financially better off than (literally) every other person I know at my age. Everyone else is just getting out of college with huge student loans, and I have multiples of times more assets than they do because I focused on right career choices and investment strategies.

 *edit*

I see your still in college, and have chosen a path in computer engineering for your job - good path, BTW. At any rate, when you involve yourself in internships, and various possible paths through computer engineering, you have to look at that path, and decide what exact aspect of that field you want to be in, and find a way to excell at it. It is only through excellence you will succeed. Through that, you can easily make that goal of $100k/USD a year. The reason I say that is that I know people that get bachelors degrees in various computer fields - IT, engineering, software programming, ect. The amount of money you earn can really vary. An average joe can pick up a book for SQL and if they dedicate the time to it, can become a SQL expert and earn very close to $100k in a matter of a few years. Likewise, someone could learn basic HTML and earn far less, or not build up a good clientelle with SQL and earn very little, too. Its all a matter of how you use your skills to leaverage them to earn great income for you. No career is going to hand you any amount of money - you have to create worth, so its all a matter of how much worth you create. Flipping hamburgers will always earn you <$10.00/hr. The key is to invent a new way to flip the hamburgers, and receieve royalties from it

Good can be subjective. You may not like Michael Pacther, but the fact is he is 'good' at what he does. What makes him 'good', I am unsure of, but Wedbush Morgan likes him enough to put his mug on anything that goes on. Maybe he's a marketing genius. Maybe he says things behind closed doors that helps investment firms. At any rate, he creates a precieved worth that earns him more money than I do.

And for myself, if I can create more precieved worth of my work, I can advance to his level...Of course, hopefully in a way to where I'm not speaking out of my rear when it comes to horrible predictions about console sales :-p

MrStickball, you can easily catch up to Patcher. All you need to do is predict a Wii HD launching within the next 2 months.

That's what you get for voting in a socialist.

In Sweden nearly all welfare and taxation systems are tailor-made to suit the interests of the union workers, to their specific income brackets and dynamics in the economic system. It's a very clever strategy. Instead of something as simple and obvious as just aiming for higher salaries, the socialists prefer intricate and complex design of the political-economic system as the main strategy to gain as much as possible in the name of equality.

I would also like to point out, that for almost every career, your expected to not be very good the first day you do it. For a doctor, your expected to be right, every time, from the first day you become one.

Holy cow this thread has derailed from Nobama to doctors and stuff.

@gurglesletch,

Here let me get it back on topic.

@TheRealMafoo,

Very true, and I think the same can be said for the Presidency! 

=P

I will say it right here and now. There has never been a completely capitalist society. Throughout most of america and it's history we have had some degree of social security going on. The honest to goodness truth is that the likelihood of a capitalist utopia is probably lower than a socialist utopia. Honestly healthcare shouldn't be that necessary for everybody. Truthfully if people would take care of themselves we probably wouldn't have to deal with a healthcare clog. I have aspergers syndrome and I am on meds. So I COULD justify prescription public option considering that there are people out there that would probably shoot up a school without them.

In theory, most forms of government are perfect. But they will never work perfectly, because we are imperfect beings carrying out the tasks. People can fight about wanting a capitalist utopia, or socialist utopia, but as long as we are humans, we will attain neither.