{"id":3011,"date":"2009-10-19T15:16:37","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T23:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3011"},"modified":"2009-10-19T15:16:37","modified_gmt":"2009-10-19T23:16:37","slug":"the-blue-collar-gospel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-blue-collar-gospel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blue-Collar Gospel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here, from America’s Newspaper of Record, is a story that\u00a0touches my heart<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Blue-collar work, whether it\u2019s planting shrubs, pounding nails, tuning engines or laying bricks, can be just as rewarding as carrying a\u00a0briefcase. In fact, it can be a whole lot more rewarding, if you\u2019re not the sedentary type, or if the alternative is a corporate purgatory of\u00a0cubicles brimming with spreadsheets and quiet desperation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Boston landscaper Joe Lamacchia (When did “gardener” beome “landscaper”? What was wrong with “gardener”? It’s\u00a0an honest old English word\u00a0\u2014 the OED<\/em> has a citation from AD\u00a01300\u00a0\u2026 Never mind\u00a0\u2026) loves his\u00a0blue-collar work and wants to proselytize.<\/p>\n

“We don\u2019t all want to sit in cubicles, pushing paper, working in middle-management jobs, traveling around the country for business\u00a0meetings,” he writes. “I want more people to think about the alternatives and realize that you can be proud about going into a trade. A\u00a0blue-collar career can be a choice that you feel good about as opposed to a fallback option.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Joe has a website<\/a> to spread the message, and now he also\u00a0has a book out: \u00a0Blue Collar and Proud of\u00a0It<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re on our way to 400 million people in this country by 2050. That\u2019s a lot of apartments, houses, roads, bridges, etc., etc. Meanwhile,\u00a0the infrastructure of the country\u2019s falling apart at the seams. The secretary of transportation, Ray LaHood, was on the radio a couple months ago\u00a0and said, “America\u2019s become one big pothole.”<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of work\u00a0\u2026 It\u2019s an exciting time. I tell people, if you\u2019re 35 and you\u2019re in the cubicle, don\u2019t wait 10 years, because right\u00a0now is the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is of course heretical. Current orthodoxy dictates that every American has four years of college (and the corresponding\u00a0quarter-million-dollar millstone of student loans) as his birthright, followed by that paper-shuffling bogus job in cube #479. For blue-collar jobs,\u00a0we import people. If God had intended us to skip college and go work with our hands, why did He create Mexico?<\/p>\n

Following on from similar books by authors preaching the blue-collar gospel\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Charles\u00a0Murray<\/a>,\u00a0Matt\u00a0Crawford<\/a> \u2014 this gets us a little closer to bursting the preposterous, middle-class-bankrupting, nation-wrecking education\u00a0bubble (43,300 hits on Google for “education bubble”).<\/p>\n

[Post reporter]\u00a0 You like to cite a 2004 study in the UK, where blue-collar workers were found to be the happiest of all\u00a0employees. What do you think is behind that?<\/em><\/p>\n

[Joe]\u00a0 It\u2019s a nice life! If you\u2019re a skilled craftsman, you can pick up your tools and go work anywhere you want. We\u2019re not living out of a\u00a0suitcase, we\u2019re not out at the airport. We\u2019re home in the evening for our kid\u2019s Little League game, for our daughter\u2019s play. These are great\u00a0jobs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think about this a lot; partly on behalf of my bright, personable, and healthy, but deeply un-academic son, who I think, barring some dramatic\u00a0character\u00a0change during his high-school career (just started), would likely be happier and more useful to society in a trade than in a cube. Also on behalf of\u00a0myself, though. With luck I have twenty years of working life ahead of me. I have no inclination to retire, being ungregarious and having no taste\u00a0for golf, bridge, Florida, or watching TV. Writing doesn’t pay worth a damn. I\u00a0have re-wired my house<\/a>, and\u00a0believe I’d make a capable and happy electrician. Have I left it too late to start? How long are the apprenticeships? Any readers in the electrical\u00a0trade care to offer advice? Or give me a pass into the union?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here, from America’s Newspaper of Record, is a story that\u00a0touches my heart. Blue-collar work, whether it\u2019s planting shrubs, pounding nails, tuning engines or laying bricks, can be just as rewarding as carrying a\u00a0briefcase. In fact, it can be a whole … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3011"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3015,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions\/3015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}