I do not exactly advocate giving an 18 year old high school graduate a scalpel and wishing them the best of luck with that appendectomy. But you do not learn how to do an appendectomy as an undergraduate or medical student, either -- you learn on the job as a resident or a fellow with years of on-the-job apprenticeship/training to actually practice as a doctor.
Even professional degrees have significant degrees of this. Doctors are not licensed to practice when they earn an MD; they are licensed to practice when they finish a residency, and much of their late undergraduate years are about getting into medical school and much of their late medical school years are about finding a residency. Attorneys have to clerk and work under other attorneys before practicing more independently. Engineers have to go years before they will be seriously in charge of projects and/or handling things that they might break or might hurt somebody if things go wrong. I can go on, but humans learn by such absorption.
Plus, these kinds of degrees are relatively rare. Engineering majors are <10% of degrees awarded nationally, and most people graduating college have relatively generic academic degrees in liberal arts, sciences, or business. I have yet to figure out what the hundreds of thousands of arts majors are prepared to do besides be grad students in their field.
Not calling them dumb -- far from it. I was one of them. But then the real learning starts.
Average GDP per capita for a few familiar places...
U.S. = $59,532
Iowa = $59,075
Canada = $45,032
United Kingdom = $39,720
View attachment 65183
Man, how do those Canadians and British people survive on so little money.
The median value you describe above is about as rich as people get on this planet.
Big list of OECD comparisons here...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
American states tend to rank highly. Even lowly Mississippi...
View attachment 65185
...gives you a standard of living near that to Seoul, South Korea.