well here's my thoughts:
Everybody thinks it's so important for everybody to get a college education and become a professional whatever. That's all fine & dandy but----we have lost sight of the basics behind all this.
OK Mr. Aerospace Engineer you have designed a system to take men into orbit and keep them alive. But could you do that without your computer? And just who built that computer--some low wage person on an assembly line. If they don't do their job right, where are you? Nowhere. By the same token, where do you work? In a building right? Who built that building? Framers. electricians, plumbers. We (I'm proud to be a plumber, even though I don't make my living at it anymore) provide you with an environment that is safe, strong & secure for you to live & work in. If the heavy equipment operator, the concrete truck driver, the formsetter, the framer, etcetera don't do a good job, you will have no place or tools to do your job. If you get typhoid or dysentery from unsanitary water & plumbing you ain't gonna be working, you're gonna be wishing you were dead. How do you get to work? do you drive a car? Well what about the factory line worker who builds your car, the highway construction worker out there in the hot cold windy rainy weather building the road, and the roughneck working the oil rig & the refinery worker & the truck driver who provides you with fuel to get to work?
Are these jobs worth any less respect than those of the high paid self righteous "engineer" (or whatever) who does whatever the fuck it is he does? Even digging a good ditch takes knowledge, skill & pride, and without a good ditch, the pipes which bring you water, fuel, gas, electricity, cannot operate as we have come to expect them to. And let's not forget the welders & foundry workers who make those pipes & connect them.
We cannot all be high paid "professionals" driving around in sports cars or sitting in big offices talking on phones or even little cubicles hunched over in front of computer screens all day. Somebody has to provide the basics that they need to operate. Are these jobs, these people, less important just because they don't have a bunch of letters following them?
Fuck I barely have a high school diploma but in the 30 years since I graduated I have taken more classes & gotten more experience than 90% of the "professionals" I have to deal with on a daily basis. Yet they look down on me because I am a 'worker'. Well fuck you, you fucking dumbass you couldn't survive for a month without the basics of life that people like me provide for you.
So just what is the priority here?
