Bachelor’s degrees are today’s equivalent of high school diplomas. Not everyone graduated high school years ago, and yet many people had good jobs in manufacturing and such. Unfortunately, where a high school diploma was fine 35–40 years ago, there are no longer the sort of really good paying jobs where a high school education would be considered enough.
You’ll have to suck it up and get some sort of education past high school, unless you have that invention that would make the world beat a path to your door. You may not necessarily need a bachelor’s, if you are looking to work a trade like repairing machines of many kinds or plumbing. Those jobs pay well and you need only go to technical college, or get yourself apprenticed someplace.