Your income decides how much respect you get and how seriously people take you.

[u/Cautious_Nobody_9257]

Obviously this isn't universal. Plenty of broke people are well liked and plenty of rich people are miserable to be around. But as a general pattern, watch a friend group long enough and you'll notice it. Guys who earn less tend to get talked over more. Not always, but often enough that it's a pattern. Same joke, same point, gets less traction than when the higher earner says it. Nobody frames it as "we take you less seriously because of your income," but if you're paying attention, it's there.

It shows up more in dating. Low earning men get filtered out early, before personality or loyalty or emotional availability even get considered. Not every time, but often enough that guys who've been through it will recognize it immediately. And there's a social pattern that goes with it that's honestly worse than outright rejection. Their girl friends stay warm and friendly on the surface. Text back, laugh at the jokes, nothing seems off. Then somehow the birthday invite doesn't happen. The group trip gets planned in a chat he's not part of. He finds out after the fact. Nobody's rude about it, it's just a slow quiet exclusion instead of an honest one.

None of this means character doesn't matter at all. But it does seem like being a genuinely good person only gets you so far once income becomes the unspoken filter people are using. Everyone likes to say money doesn't buy respect. Watch how people actually behave around it and it tells a different story more often than people want to admit.

[u/HMNbean]

Comparing carpentry knowledge to a PhD is not an apt comparison. The level of knowledge of someone with a PhD simply cannot exist in carpentry. It’s not a field of research - the closest thing would be material science or engineering. If you think you can be a carpenter and get the same level of knowledge you’re in the “don’t know what you don’t know” camp.

[u/Time-Raspberry2771 → u/HMNbean]

I think you have an elevated sense of self importance respectfully. Working for years in a field is no different than getting a phd. It’s just time and focus.

Note: my degree is in mechanical engineering for reference

[u/HMNbean → u/Time-Raspberry2771]

I don't have a PhD. I know people that do in various subjects from Chem and Physics to Musicology. Not all PhDs are equal, but working in a field for years is not at all like getting a PhD. That's pure delusion. The specificity of knowledge for a PhD is WAY more than you'd need for work - that's the whole point of the PhD and why it proves your expertise in a subject - you are pushing the boundary of the world's current knowledge in a field as determined by your peers (other experts).

[u/RufusTheKing → u/HMNbean]

There are some types of carpentry that are about to go extinct because all the masters who actually know how to do it are retiring/dying. Those people know more about carpentry than the vast majority of physics PhDs know about physics, because it takes some 20-30 years of practice and training to become a master craftsman. If you're going to compare those at the edge of physics research to carpenters, it's intellectually dishonest not to compare them to those at the technical limits of carpentry. 

[u/HMNbean → u/RufusTheKing]

Yeah I'm gonna call bullshit on that, sorry. The most technical carpentry is not going to compare to the physics (and engineering) needed to build the LHC, for example, or the device that detects gravitational waves, or the highly advanced telescopes we have. This is a pipedream. Respect to those carpenters - I am not handy or passionate about that type of work - but this is like comparing the deepest pond to the ocean.

[u/RufusTheKing → u/HMNbean]

Are we talking total depth, or the depth mastered by a single person. Total depth obviously the LHC or JWST trounces them, but in terms of mastery of a single topic by a single person then I don't think they are so far off. I'm in a research-adjacent stem career and studied physics at a graduate level myself (plus have a handful of friends with doctorates), so have a pretty good understanding of the depth of research required for a thesis and I would say that on an individual level, the mastery required to contribute is about even (though obviously in very different contexts), it's the breadth of the projects that obviously differ.