Plumbers make closer to 40k a year. Some tiny pcnt of them will get as high as the low hundreds, not as plumbers but as owners of successful plumbing companies. But the top tiny pcnt of software people who move into ownership and succeed become... stupid rich. if you compare apples to apples, the wealthy plumber fantasy fades quick.
That's not how labor-intensive businesses work. Again, The amount a client pays per hour for labor != the takehome pay of the person whose time you're ostensibly being charged for.
Revenue is not profit, and "price per hour for labor" != "hourly rate I pay my laborers". This is even true in owner-operator businesses. Furthermore, in bursty markets, "annual income amortized over career" != "my hourly rate multiplied by 40-60 multiplied by the number of weeks I want to work".
The numbers from my links are INCOME, not "what the business charged the client".
Well, either he's pocketing a large fraction of that or he's up to his eyeballs in debt looking at his new boat and his fancy new truck. Methinks you're overanalyzing it.
To the contrary. We have actual data that directly answers the question "what is the typical take-home pay of plumbers". You just have to look at the damn table.
Why keep insisting on proxy variables and anecdotes?
