That”s pure bullsh1t
I paid a contractor 2k euros + materials to paint my walls of 2 bedroom apartment in Spain ( way poorer country than USA ) . 2k is the average salary in Madrid or a Barcelona ( the richest cities in Spain ) . And it actually took me a while to get this quote as on average it was like 2.5k
It is a job that took 2 days. 1 day of you are super eager.
Start at 6 am and finish at 6-7 pm
Every contractor when something broken asks for a lot of money. Electricians, plumbers, etc. even a very simple thing costs that takes 10 minutes to fix costs like 100 euros
And you do not need any debt or going to college to be a contractor for these kind of stuff.
By the time your friends graduate college you can be a master electrician ( you have a small salary as an apprentice but neverless you will not make debt ) and set up your own shop
But yeah, I agree… you have to actually work something that most people are not ok with
Stop blaming others for your poor decisions
Even going to college, if you are not ok with manual jobs like I mentioned above , is quite affordable if you go the public universities ( the vast majority of them are well ranked too ). Costs like 5k a year to go to one of them + further discounts if you are at least a decent student. They have quite high admission rates too