I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but from what I’ve seen around here, the white working class is quite used to feeling abandoned. Liberals are seen as the sort of people who would never get their hands dirty and who disdain blue collar jobs of any kind, instead gravitating towards elite positions at universities or jobs in government or public policy where they can tell their inferiors what to do. While the universities are filled with the latter, local community colleges are inundated with white working class kids seeking to obtain for themselves what they failed to get from the public schools: basic literacy and numeracy — and job skills which are of actual use in the real world.
Aside from the irony that anyone with a high school degree should have to go to college in order to learn to read and write, a perfect example of a valuable real-world skill is welding. Public school teachers (who reflect the view of the educrat class) tend to hold such “dirty” and “dangerous” work in disdain, and they steer kids away from it. Guidance counselors attempt to push them into universities where they go into a lifetime of debt for worthless degrees that impart zero job skills. But some of the kids are smarter than that. They realize that if you have a skill that is worth something in the real world, you can actually feed your family.
They also know something that the Occupy movement (often holders of useless degrees) has missed: that the educational system’s institutional bias against promoting real world skills has led to shortages — in some instances not of jobs, but of skilled workers to fill them. Such as welders.
I have to take exception to his use of the term “liberal” here, because what he is really talking about are progressives. Many FDR/New Deal liberals are blue-collar liberals and they aren’t ashamed to work with their hands nor do they sneer at people who do.
Today’s progressives have contempt for the working class and think physical labor is beneath them. They talk about workers as a bloc of voters to be wooed and led, but not as equal partners.
Listen to them talk when they are defending illegal immigration – they claim we need illegal immigrants because American workers are too lazy to perform those jobs. Does that sound like someone who respects the working class?
Filed under: Economy, Education Tagged: | Classism, Economy, Education
I always wanted to make furniture.
Real furniture, with real wood.
I want to own my own restaurant and be the head cook. We would serve meat. Red meat. Grilled, broiled, fried and baked meat. Maybe some chicken, but no fish.
No veggies except side salads.
I went to culinary school for fun right after I retired. Our kitchen was being remodeled, and while I was in school, I got to bring food home every night all prepared. I could buy into that menu. Although I like fish, my husband who grew up landlocked won’t touch anything that used to live in the water so I haven’t developed much of a repertoire for fish.But if you open your restaurant, I’d like to be the pastry chef. I make really good pie. And bread. I even make my own hot dog rolls.
Just don’t serve moose. I don’t want to accidentally be a cannibal.
There goes the “Sarahburger”
would you go for cheesecake filled chocolate covered strawberries????
I will tell you how to make them
Jeebus, I think I gained calories just from thinking about that.
hey
they are good for you
fruit – dairy and chocolate is good for the heart
Me too. Build anything, really. I used to spend long car rides with my folks reverse engineering everything I saw along the side of the road. But that inclination finally got beat out of me, so I gave it up for more feminine pursuits. Like getting pregnant. Now that motherhood is close to endng, maybe I should go to BMW mechanic school. I hear they make bank, and I have small hands with lots of fine motor coordination.
I should say, direct motherhood is coming to a close. I know I’ll always be her mom.
Wait, I thought one had to have upper body strength to be a mechanic? Because otherwise I wanna be one too.
Depends on the kind of mechanic you are. Working on rigs or big machinery, yeah, upper body strength works well. But working on these smaller, electronic engines means manual dexterity and fitting into tight spaces.
You guys are inspiring me. I always wanted to marry a mechanic. (…having gotten “little ladied” one too many times at the garage…)
I will have to go back and look for it , I posted a link several days ago about how China is not funding educational programs unless they are useful> If you can not get a job with the course you took, why should the government fund it.
makes sense to me
here is the link
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_root_cause_of_market_failure_in_higher_education_99387.html
I found the perfect Christmas gift for obots
http://www.spreadthewealthgame.com/
ROFLMAO! Where do you find these things? That is just sooo funny!
Hmmm- there is a Klown over there on that board game link. Has Myiq branched out?
Love it.
can’t wait for them to call me to fix their toilet. Its gonna be very expensive.
I sent both my kids to the local vocational technical high school. Their teachers tried to talk me out of it because they were “college material”. Learning a vocational skill did not make them too dumb to go to college. They both were accepted at the schools they wanted to go to and were very successful. And they’re not afraid to get their hands dirty. I half expect my son to ditch the cubicle job.
Einstein said if he had to do it all over again he would have been a plumber.
There’s a lot of physics in plumbing.
I like the distinction of liberal vs. progressive. Real liberals have roots in FDR and are blue collar or come from blue collar and believe in real equality. Progressives are of the variety found in academically espoused socialism, which is about imposing a system on lessors because they know better. The same sort of people who’s approach to “helping” working class and minorities is about patronizing and offering a “helping hand” as a sort of pennants for them doing well. And yes, always while using a sneer font.
The Obama movement reeks of it. OWS reeks of it. Quite a few in the Dem part reek of it. The tell is the easy use of the race card whether about a presidential candidate, social programs, or immigration issues. In other words, they can’t talk about real issues, they can only hate and only perceive everyone with other opinions as being hateful.
The Progressive Era has been described as a time period from 1897 to maybe 1980 where the role of government was expanded. Liberal sort of came about in the 1960s as a social movement.
Everyone expands the role of government. So that’s pretty meaningless. Of course some make noise about not wanting too, but they tend to do the opposite. See for example, every modern Republican president.
Every modern Republican after Coolidge. Eisenhower had balanced budgets and a top marginal tax rate above 90% as president. Richard Nixon was considered socially liberal. Many of the first government programs of FDR’s presidency were bills initiated by Hoover and stalled in a Democratic Congress.
The Progressive Era brought us eugenics.
That didn’t post where I thought it would. Maybe I’m supposed to be making dinner.
Eugenics started in the US and was fairly popular until the Nazis gave it a bad name.
True story, elliesmom. And all in the name of “doing good” to help the poor.
My textbooks place the Progressive Era from 1890-1920 or 1896-1916.
They all agree it ended by the Twenties.
Hillary describes herself as a progressive and she doesn’t fit your description at all. Frankly, you sound as if you’re quoting Glenn Beck.
I was interviewed about a job at a community college for a mentor. What they actually wanted was someone to keep students in their certificate welding program, which wasn’t getting a lot of attention.
Welding is a MAJOR skill to have. Everyone with a car will probably need a welder at some point for something. Welding is used in industry all the time. There’s also a lot of science and engineering behind it as well. You just don’t need to write research papers on it.
I love my local vo-tech school and community college. Just the best classes on everything having to do with construction and related things for example. And skill at those jobs is very valuable. In fact there’s quite a shortage from what I’ve seen.
I haven’t taken welding yet, but I’m planning on it. I will need that skill after I take care of a few neighbors. What, did I say that out loud?
Oooh, acetylene torches and masks! I wanna do that too!
Welding posts time when we get started.
I’m there.
last week I read about the human resource department of the Union Pacific railroad wanting to hire an electrician. In this economy they could only find two that they could interview. Now that is a damn shame. Working on the railroad gives you a good living. Yes , it is not a 9 to 5 job but you get paid well
My company hired a technician yesterday. He didn’t show up today. This is what employers have to deal with.
Maybe you should have paid him more
this one has to be an obot
http://www.breitbart.tv/homeless-lady-with-15-kids-somebody-needs-to-pay-for-all-my-children/
Maybe the Progressives were right. Maybe there should be an IQ test before one is allowed to become a parent.
LOL! I like how she says, “somebody needs to be held accountable for this!”
do worry about money, you can not be in this much debt
http://weaselzippers.us/2011/12/01/obamanomics-federal-government-debt-for-first-11-months-of-2011-1-1-trillion/
When did Smurfette go PG-13?
Blue collars became a dirty thing during the 2008 primaries when they refused to vote for Obama in PA.
True story.
Nah, they became a “dirty thing” when downsizing and union-busting became the rage during the reigns of Obama’s hero, Ronald Reagan and his separated-at-birth twin sister, Maggie Thatcher. Obama just made it unanimous.
a hero
http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2011/11/dog-rescues-kittens-dumped-in-traffic/
Dogs rule
this made me furious. When did it become wrong to want to “buy American”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/buy-american-ad-rejected-in-seattle-for-being-too-political/
WTF?
One day, I will understand how the working people progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt morphed into the creative class progressivism of Barack Obama.
Obot fauxgressives are “progressive” in the same sense that North Korea is a “democratic republic”. As Abraham Lincoln once observed, “calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”
It’s a little disingenuous for Leno to be talking about welders “getting rich” when the median income for a full-time welder is $36K/year (well below the median income of full-time workers in the US) – which is approximately equal to an hour and eighteen minutes pay for Lloyd Blankfein (based on his 2007 compensation),
I’ll bet Leno spends more than that on car wax in a year.
He’s right though – welders built this country, and they’ve been getting screwed ever since.