Young people today (especially in the USA) don't need look very closely at life to know that those who do stuff with their hands, as in "the Trades" are now mostly living below poverty level. Remember those professions? "Tradesmen"? You know, Carpenters, Electricians, Plumbers, Mechanics, Painters..etc?. Not "Happening" any more. Learning how to do something like fix a car or hang a door...That is considered a waste of time and beneath a "real person"..All the trades seem to be handled by the illegals now, because they are jobs "Americans" won't do any more (for the money that's being paid, anyways) I know, having been a journeyman carpenter and sometime-contractor, that wages in the Trades are about what they were 20 years ago. Great money, if you are from south of the border. But you'd have to be a real fool to consider learning a trade as a career now... For a few years, I worked as a master shipwright, building and repairing custom sailboats in an upscale boatyard in the Northwest. One winter during a slow day, we got out all our past year's customer invoices and for curiosity went through to see what all our yacht owner-customers did for money....Of 300-odd customers only two actually did anything the resulted in 'real' results....by real, I mean created a 'widget' that they could sell or point to and say "That's what I do"...The yacht owners didn't do any manual labor at all...they bought, sold, advised, brokered, commissioned, etc..If they didn't do their money making jobs....nobody would miss their "product" because they have no product...except money.. So youngsters today aren't dumb. They look around and see what is what. Then they decide to spend their time learning how to earn enough money to pay 'flunky's' to fix their Porsche Cayenne or their Hummer while they play tennis or golf and phone the office once or twice to make a few more mil... Getting dirty working on a car?...Out of fashion. Pounding a nail? Nah, you go by the local 7-11 and get a casual day labor guy to do that for you for a few bucks an hour.. "Nitwits"? The young people today think working on a car is a nitwit-job and not worth doing..most of em. If they can pull it off, they may be right. I kinda like it, though...so I guess I'm a dinosaur, doing stuff with my own hands... Don Hanson |
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