"If you want to feel old after 42 years, keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gears"
My dad did blue collar labor his whole life and his body hurt. He would take something like 6 ibuprofen every morning with breakfast. To do that kind of work requires you putting your family above yourself, which is a noble thing. I think what people miss in the old "you could support a family doing this" was that it was very much you actively harming yourself so that your family could be better off.
It's the same thing with coal miners. They get all sorts of terrible health consequences from the work, but it is a noble sacrifice to them.
My dad was adamant that we were going to college and living a more comfortable life than he did. So here I am, a software engineer with plenty of worries in the world, but at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I do it for twenty years.
I didn't read this article word for word, but it seemed to have a bit of an agenda to it. The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're working class is how driven you are. If you are lazy, you'll struggle your whole life. There isn't any family safety net to keep you ignorant of that.
It's important to give people access to opportunity, but it's up to the individual to be self-motivated enough to take it. Education isn't some magical panacea.