"You'd be surprised at how many blue collar workers are well educated and intellectual."

Sort of nitpicking here; but, IMHO, the only ones who would be surprised are those who stereotype blue-collar workers as doing "manual" labor because they aren't "smart enough" for other work.

Kind of like Kerry when he said the only folks in the military are those who aren't smart enough for college.

In my family, I'm the only one who has a college degree and I am NOT the smartest in my family. Not by a long shot.

The work siblings and others do is most definitely blue-collar requiring more thought, more knowledge, better skills than my college degree would have ever prepared me for.

The second commenter has it right though. With my college degree I do have more options available than others in my family. I'm not "locked in" to any one career. The same cannot be said of my blue-collar family members.

Welders, to use the example, who don't know anything else are stuck looking for just welding work. That is one of the reasons why a college degree was pushed so hard back in the day. College can, and often does, open up many more doors than a trade.

I find that one of the key components of any discussion nowadays about jobs, despite many good points being discussed, is that we currently have a jobs-killing CEO in the white house. It seems every sentence coming out of his mouth (except when he is picking his bracket for the final four - there's real presidential business, no?) shows his ignorance about how the private sector creates and keeps jobs.

And Home Ec. People should be able to fix their socks and plan and prepare a meal.

The $150,000 welder may be an unusual example, but many people are just better suited to trade than "university" careers. These sorts of aptitudes are looked down upon, but being a good carpenter (to take one example) is anything but easy.

Also worth considering: IT jobs may be offshored, but someone local has got to fix your toilet.

I toured my old high school when I was back for my 25th reunion. The wing that housed the shop classes had been converted into athletic facilities and the home ec rooms had been turned into a daycare. It struck me as very sad.

The trend began in the 1970s, when it became conventional wisdom that a four-year college degree was essential.

The trend began in the 1970s, when colleges began marketing themselves like soft drinks, toilet paper and personal hygiene products, preying on the insecurity of those who thought their children would never succeed in life without a degree, regardless of the child's aptitude.

What the article doesn't say is how many overtime hours the 60 welders had to work to earn $150k, or what the working conditions were like. It doesn't mention that welding, especially on pipelines, is filthy, all weather, exposes the welder to hazardous fumes, it can be dangerous and may require that you work at a remote site; you won't be home for dinner. It may be a job you can do in your early years, but perhaps not so in later years.

Not sayin' that kids shouldn't consider a trade, but I second what Archer said about welding. Back in the winter of 2007, I worked (as a holewatch/firewatch...jobs I didn't know existed) with pipefitters, boilermakers and welders at a Conoco-Phillips refinery near Bellingham, Washington during a maintenance shutdown. Yeah, they made good money but we worked seven 12-hour days and it was gritty, shitty work (and miserable conditions: cold & rainy.) Of the older welders that I talked to, none said they'd encourage their kids to pursue welding, due to the health risks.

That summer, I worked on another construction project, this time just as a firewatch, with pipefitters and welders. We were running pipes from the roof of an existing building to the roof of a new building. Again, 12-hour days and miserable conditions (on a black tar roof in blazing Eastern Washington heat), although not as bad as the refinery.

Finally, that fall, I worked with pipefitters and welders (many of them from that summer project) on converting two fishing boats into yachts (here's one of them), at a shipyard in Seattle. Once again, long days and gritty, shitty work. I learned some welding from my co-workers when we had spare time and my foreman on those last two projects told me there was a welder shortage and was trying to convince me to go into it. The good pay was appealing, as was having time off between jobs, but nothing else about it was appealing to me.

"You'd be surprised at how many blue collar workers are well educated and intellectual."

Admittedly, I haven't worked extensively around blue collar workers but, taking those three experiences of mine, I might very well be surprised. There wasn't a single pipefitter, welder or boilermaker I worked with on any of those three projects who I would call well-educated or intellectual. That doesn't mean they were cretins (although some of the guys in the shipyard came close), but they certainly weren't intellectual.

High school and college prepare kids how to make their way in government jobs or in large, bureaucratic, hierarchical corporations - the two are remarkably similar - which makes sense in a way because that's where most of the jobs are.

If you think our educational system has "failed" because it doesn't produce long-term, big-picture critical thinkers, you should revisit your assumptions about what the purpose of the educational system is.

My husband is a welder. No, he doesn't make $150k a year, and we're not moving to Midland, TX, or North Dakota, any time soon. Now, it's entirely possible that he could make that NEXT year, but right now he's still building his client base. He doesn't do oilfield or large structural stuff- he does architectural, light structural (think balconies,etc) and custom-furniture. If we incorporate and *I* own his business, we'll end up growing his business substantially because he'll be eligible for city contracts and large development projects as a "woman/minority-owned business." We're looking at doing that in the next six months or so.
(If you live in central Texas you might be familiar with "Viking Fence." They're one of the larger companies around and they grew because they're minority-owned and got government contracts. Developers who are getting incentives to do projects usually have a quota to make as far as how many minority-owned subcontractors they have to hire. Sometimes there are only one or two minority-owned businesses that are available to bid a job at all, so it's almost by default that they get a lot of the large projects. It's stupid and unfair and has nothing to do with work quality or prices, but that's how it works.
Anyway, my husband has been to the ER twice in the last year, has almost been electricuted, and has had more than one close call with his fingers/hands nearly getting caught or tangled in machinery. He gets burned regularly. He's having problems with his elbow and his back/shoulders hurt all the time.
So, yes, you can make lots of money as a welder but you have to move somewhere that for many of us is undesirable, or you have to own your own business and know how to work the system.

Much of this is the pendulum has swung too far to the side of pushing college on everyone. It is not for everyone, neither is trade school. But as seen with the 90% of shop classes closing we are pushing college on everyone.
Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) is a big proponent of re-introducing trade jobs, and stopping the crazy level of push toward liberal arts college.

As to blue collar vs intellectuals. I have an odd perspective on it. I come from a very blue collar backgrounds and was decent at it, but I also had a scientists mind. SO while pursuing a physics degree I was doing roofing.
I wouldn't use the term better educated but differently educated. Some of my roofing crew wouldn't know who Schrodinger was but many of my fellow Physics students wouldn't know which end of a hammer to use.

Estelle's comments remind me of this quote by John W Gardner: "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

"High school and college prepare kids how to make their way in government jobs or in large, bureaucratic, hierarchical corporations - the two are remarkably similar -"

ding ding ding.

I have been in manufacturing all my life and I think to myself god these American kids are dumb for not apprenticing themselves out like I see these Mexican guys do (the ones that make a lot of money ).

I had one guy pay 80,000 on his home doing specialized manual labor. He has more work than he can handle.

I'm talking about manual jobs that take years to learn and are artistic in nature. If I was a guy instead of going to college I would do that. But then again people don't think about these jobs existing.

All they see is office workers.

A man I know worked at Ace Hardware in Berkeley. He had to teach the instructors how to make up tool kits (which he would sell) for the students, most of whom didn't know the difference between a Phillips and a flat-head screwdriver.

I dumped my tech career when I was 40 and learned horseshoeing. As long as women keep turning 50, 'get-a-divorce-and-buy-a-horse', I'll have plenty of work!

When are we going to talk about there not being enough female welders?

"I find that one of the key components of any discussion nowadays about jobs, despite many good points being discussed, is that we currently have a jobs-killing CEO in the white house. It seems every sentence coming out of his mouth (except when he is picking his bracket for the final four - there's real presidential business, no?) shows his ignorance about how the private sector creates and keeps jobs."

Here he actually throws Hollywood digital studios under the bus. This ought to show up soon in the Google search results for "Obama unaware..."

I toured my old high school when I was back for my 25th reunion. The wing that housed the shop classes had been converted into athletic facilities and the home ec rooms had been turned into a daycare.

Please tell me the daycare was part of a program for students who want to be preschool teachers.

My neighbor is a union grip in movies. he makes over $200,000 a year--his BA isn't in film, either. And yet, most people who want to work in movies go into heavy student loan debt and don't ever see a set.

Ppen, agreed. Most office jobs suck.

See here:

http://www.fakenation.info/please/the-poisonous-workday

Me, I'm an accountant. I love metrics, measuring, analysis, and all the other shit that goes into determining whether and how a business makes money. And I even have some entrepreneurial ideas of my own, although I completely lack the business plan and startup capital to start a business of my own. Or the interest, for that matter. I just want to keep the books and perform financial analysis for other people's businesses. I'm too worried about sleeping under a bridge to start my own business. I have nothing to fall back on.

I just read an article today about 50-60 something aged people who are moving back in with their parents. What always echoes in my brain is that none of these people should have had kids of their own. But I don't know what you do with a species that only thinks, 'I want' instead of, 'Is this a good idea?' I'm really beyond caring what happens to them, at this point.

I just read an article today about 50-60 something aged people who are moving back in with their parents. What always echoes in my brain is that none of these people should have had kids of their own. But I don't know what you do with a species that only thinks, 'I want' instead of, 'Is this a good idea?' I'm really beyond caring what happens to them, at this point.

Posted by: Pirate Jo at April 22, 2014 5:30 PM

Only in America does everyone think it is the adult ideal to be as independent as possible from your parents, and other blood relatives, and stick them in a nursing home, or on an ice flow as soon as they become too much of a bother.

Parents should be treated like they are as precious and valuable as your children, especially if they treated you that way when they were raising you.

Why is it so hard for some people to learn, that it is a good idea to put your family first?

I think a lot of people are in for a lesson, in how most of the world works. Those one and two occupant McMansions with 10k in property taxes every year, are getting out of reach for a lot of the middle class.

I'm with you PJ, loved the link.

I don't care if the human species dies off but that always elicits such hate from people.

99.999999% of all species that have ever lived have died off (including other human species) but we are the exception right right? Because you are popping kids out or whatever.

Please tell me the daycare was part of a program for students who want to be preschool teachers

Basic childcare was a class when I was in high school in the 80's. I know because due to a schedule crunch, I either had to take that or electronics. I cried because "girls don't take electronics" but I sure as hell wasn't taking basic childcare.

Unsurprisingly, electronics was a blast.

One thing that I've come to realize, through the exploits of my stepson, is that lots of manufacturing and construction operations have a need for casual welding. They don't need it every day, but they want to have some employees around who can weld when it's needed. When a piece of large machinery breaks down, if you have to get service and parts it can shut you down for weeks, but if the broken part can be fixed by doing some welding onsite, you're back up and running in an hour or so. Manual welding might also be involved in piece rework; if something comes off the line and it's not done properly, you're not going to just run it back through since the machine didn't do it right the first time, so someone hand-welds it to fix the problem.

An odd side effect of manufacturing automation is that employers have more need of jack-of-all-trades type employees: someone who can work on the line one day, load and set up a CNC machine the next day, and then do shop maintenance the day after that. The decrease in unionization is also playing into that; employers no longer are required or willing to hire skill employees who sit around and wait for some event to happen that requries their special skills. They want guys who can do some other work until that skill is needed.

Isab, you can read the article here, if you want:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-adults-in-parents-home-20140421,0,2293806.story?page=1&fb_action_ids=10152355970744507#axzz2zdIvctxK

They talk about two different situations, and they both sound awful to me. It wasn't the kids I felt sorry for - they seemed like deadbeats - so much as the 77-year-old lady who enjoyed having her place to herself and taking care of her garden, and then had four people invade her space.

Since when did Americans start sticking their parents on ice floes? If anything we spend more money on old people than anything else, and most of them don't end up in nursing homes. They usually live in their own homes right up until they die.

No way would I EVER want to live with my parents again. Once was enough. They don't want me living with them again, either. I get along great with them, but that's precisely because I don't live with them.

It isn't about feeling like having my own place is an "adult ideal." It's that I am an introvert who thrives on peace and quiet and hates living with other people - ANY other people. I love, love, love having my own place all to myself. Some people of a more extroverted nature might find it lonely, but I like solitude. If I was trying to conform to American cultural norms, I would be married and have kids and a mortgage that bled me dry for 30 years.

"learn welding and move to North Dakota. Those guys are writing their own ticket". -Mike Rowe, an awesomely smart proponent of the trades.

I went to a 4 year college. Got A degree, because that was what was expected. What came after was rarely mentioned beyond a vague "graduate program". I got a job as a receptionist out of college, 25k in debt! Hubby went into the military, let them pay him to learn a technical trade, and makes enough to support a family of 6 in a middle class lifestyle. No degree debt. Guess what path our kids and being encouraged to follow?? Took me 10 years to finally get the associates degree (RN) that made me highly hirable and worth paying well.

Hubby went into the military, let them pay him to learn a technical trade, and makes enough to support a family of 6 in a middle class lifestyle. -- momof4 at April 23, 2014 7:37 PM

M4,

I would advise against a military experience at least until the Democrats are out of the White House.

They are in the process of gutting the military and even making four years is getting into the are of luck, not skill.