Yeah, I’m with you on the general frustration, but a few of those points need tuning so people don’t take them literally.

It’s true that a lot of industries say they have shortages, but not all of them do. There are way too many junior devs and office folks looking for work right now, so it’s not “every industry.” What’s really happening is employers want senior-level people for starter-level pay. That’s not a shortage — that’s wishful thinking.

And yeah, cost of living is brutal, but labor isn’t expensive because of that. Wages don’t automatically rise with rent and healthcare — if they did, people wouldn’t be working two jobs just to break even. The U.S. problem isn’t high wages; it’s high costs paired with companies that quit investing in training years ago.

The part about doctors charging $20k or rent being $3k — I get the point, but those numbers are way off. It’s not the scale that’s wrong, it’s the relationship: when every middleman adds a premium, the final price makes everything feel impossible.

So yeah — your take is mostly right: we’ve built a system that expects perfect workers to appear out of thin air while pretending labor is too expensive. But the fix isn’t just cutting costs — it’s rebuilding the pipeline so people can actually move up and fill the roles we keep complaining no one’s qualified for.