I wasn't arguing against being a consultant, merely pointing out that an hourly rate of a consultant is something where a bit of context is needed in order to be able to interpret the number, and that a consulting rate can easily seem high compared to an implied hourly rate received by a fulltime employee in a low-risk environment if the context is unknown or misunderstood. -- But the same is also true for comparing fulltime salaries, especially with onsite jobs, where cost of living, cost of real estate, tax regime, social security implications etc all have a huge role to play and make an apples-to-apples comparison difficult.