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Message: <blockquote data-quote="turf3" data-source="post: 640153" data-attributes="member: 8105">Well, here in the US, the middle classes and above are awash in debt so they've lost the idea of saving, or of doing manual work themselves. If you've never used tools to repair something in your life, you have no idea whether $50 for a job of work is reasonable or excessive.I look up and down my street in the city and not a one of my neighbors mow their own grass.  Almost all of them are young (ish) people, almost all are married couples.  Heck, the young women all look like they spend plenty of time in the gym; so they don't need a man to do light work around the house like mowing the lawn.  The lots are small.  It takes half an hour to do a quick mowing, and every one of these young healthy couples pays a crew to do it.  Aside from myself, the only people I've ever seen on the street with the hood of the car up ("bonnet" for y'all) is the Mexican workmen.  None of the residents look like they've ever changed oil or aired up a tire in their lives.This is the house I grew up in.  When I was a boy, NO one paid to have their yard mowed except elderly ladies, who had it done by a neighborhood boy.  On any Saturday except in bad weather, someone would be in the driveway or street with the hood ("Bonnet" for y'all) up, changing spark plugs, setting timing, changing oil, what have you.  If the house needed to be painted, Dad, Mom, and all the kids over the age of five got out there with scrapers, then primer, then paint.  Dad would do the heaviest work and the tall ladder stuff, Mom was on the ground, the kiddies were doing whatever they were capable of.  By the time I was 12 or so, Dad and I would alternate off on the ladder work, climbing, scraping, scraping, scraping, etc. So if I need a toilet replaced and I don't want to do it myself (I'm old now, and I have money, and a bad back) - don't come to me and tell me you want $2000 for the job.  I know that's BS.  Same with small jobs like replacing a neck ("Crook" for y'all) cork - once you look at it, if you've used your hands all your life, you can see how the job's done, and you can see roughly what the job should cost.But once you get under 60 years of age and a decently-paid desk job, the number of people who have a tool kit and aren't afraid to use it starts to asymptotically approach zero.  Of course, tradesmen, laborers, and poor people of all stripes still use it up, wear it out, and make do with it, but the disappearance of such skills in people who don't do them for a living is really a remarkable social change in the US in my lifetime.Maybe it's because in my generation, a very large fraction of my peers' parents grew up on farms, all of them went through the Depression and then the war.  Sitting back calling "the professional" and putting it on your credit card just weren't options on the farm, during the Depression, or in the jungles of New Guinea.</blockquote>