Some of it is well intended - trades can be lucrative especially for people who are less interested in office work - but a lot of it is also to try and dodge the issue that the some of the industries that employ the most people in this country treat them all like shit. Retail, hospitality, and food service workers don't deserve to be paid as well as plumbers and electricians because they didn't go to school.
Also I've heard it's to weaken the construction unions (which is the real reason tradespeople make good money)
Edit: To elaborate, it's bootstraps stuff. You don't have to go to college to be comfortable, you can go into a trade too! Don't question why a burger flipper doesn't deserve a living wage though.
Yeah I've heard of roofers working in places like Florida making 8$ an hour, which is just unbelievable. I can't imagine anyone when i was growing up stepping on a roof for less than 20.
That's a really good example. Similar industry to the trades, maybe slightly less intellectual labor but a whole lot of physical labor and job hazard, but because there's no guild protecting them they get treated like garbage. The solution being pushed is never "set up a roofer's union" though, it's always "don't be a roofer".
Nothing inherently wrong with going into a trade career, but the discourse around it in the U.S. amounts to “learn to code” but paired with the typical conservative brainworms about what kind of jobs count as working class
As a bio grad, thank God that the GOP stopped pretending to be the standing authority on STEM. While bio doesn't have too many CHUDs, I've had some friends in CS who joked that it's sort have become the STEM equivalent of the business major.
Can't stand the discourse. Trade school is great for some people, but it feels like it's being touted as a one size fits all solution. The trades are hard on the body, and the lack of humanities classes leads to students who aren't socially well rounded.
As an LGBT person who went to trade school, the experience was painful and isolating. After I left I decided to scrap the trades entirely.
Obviously the experience varies from person to person. I did have fun, and I learned a lot, and I enjoyed the hands on nature of the classes- but the (passive & aggressive) homophobia from the students and some of the teachers made the experience unbearable.
I feel like "and become a F-250 driving small business tyrant" is definitely embedded in the chud suggestion to go to trade school.
My dad is in his early 60s and is still going strong as an independent contractor, but his retirement plan is basically "Roll me into a ditch when I keel over."
I have to credit Mike Rowe for being instrumental in my radicalization. This dude went to the place that I used to work at, and this millionaire being a television host, cosplaying as my job, and telling people not to bitch really opened my eyes.
Trade schools are schools, you dense fucks - it should be free too
I’ve had convos about it with chuds and libs.
On the one hand, chuds think trades are more dignified because it is skilled, manual (read: manly) work which can be lucrative but also requires some physical sacrifice. Now for me, it’s clear that looking at the bigger picture with Mike Rowe advocating trades over college that what companies are looking for are cheaper workers to do the dirty, difficult work that is costing them too much right now. Chuds consider college to be the exact opposite of trades especially with regards to non-STEM and non-business tracks. They consider universities centers of elite, liberal indoctrination that serve no productive purpose.
On the other hand, libs advocate for trades in a way that says that workers need to be better equipped and allowed to enter the workforce at an earlier time versus college/university degrees for which a 4-year degree is the baseline. The lib will emphasize the applicability of the skills and knowledge but hedge that trades, like college, isn’t for everyone.
Both agree that a trade grants a person a higher possibility of becoming a well-paid independent business owner which is something to aspire to especially since corporate employment isn’t what it used to be.
Both will also tacitly agree that the only purpose of education is to create a better worker who can do their job better. Education is only a tool for financial gain and nothing else.
In the American psyche, the lionization of the small business owner anchors so many concepts that even education revolves around the questions of “would this make a good (read: skilled and subordinate) employee?” and “would this make a profitable enterprise?”
"Go do X" rhetoric when someone legitimately wants advice: cool and good.
"Go do X" as a way to dismiss someone's experience and suggest that they just need to fix it through individualistic action like it's their fault for having troubles: go straight to hell.
"Go do X" as a way to hand wave away an inherently unstable and exploitative economic system: :gui-better:
People saying this have only ever done management or paper pushing jobs and are looking at salary numbers like it's their cushy job, trades cripple your body and without adequate healthcare, can destroy your life
Yup, there are real downsides that don't get mentioned. Add to that the frequent need to invest in a ton of your own equipment, or to eventually start your own business (a whole different skill set) to really cash in/keep earning after your body starts breaking down.
for chuds its plain anti-intellectualism and harping on the culture war points of gay marxist universities brainwashing the kids
if a liberal says it theyre a fuckin elitist who thinks poors should stay out of the classy uni-educated jobs
JT from Second Thought makes a good point in this video that "trade school" isn't exclusive with college. Some trades require taking classes at those sissy liberal universities, so the way they're presented as silo'd away form each other is very disingenuous.
It's also funny that other degree roadmaps don't get much attention - my mom went back to school in her 50's to do physical therapy and got an associate's degree through a two year program, and she got hired at a prestigious hospital not long after that for decent pay at the time.
I would be fine as long as it was de-stigmatized.
A boomer saying that I would have more respect for if they went to trade school themselves, and genuinely want to encourage people to try their hand at it. There's PLENTY of perfectly friendly tradespeople, I remember doing a summer job as a dock worker, and there was this cheerful 70-something man, who we'll call Greg. Greg was the most cheerful, optimistic guy in the world and he single-handedly made that grueling summer bearable. Greg, if you're out there, thank you. Yes, some people might be more interested in trades, and I have no problem with people recommending it to individuals who are unsure what to do.
Then, there seems to be a subsect of boomers that were either lucky enough to get a job right out of high school or went to college, but want to hog that amazing experience all to themselves by claiming they were meant to go to college, but not young people. Especially minorities who should simply shut up and go back to their place as "the help" (if that's trade school, so be it. Trade school is for the background characters after all).
I wanted to do trades but no one was hiring 1st year apprentices at the time, probably still. They were all too happy to poach each other's 2nd year apprentices but God forbid you have to START someone's apprenticeship what if they get poached in their second year??
This has been better lately thanks to the "labor shortage." The shop I work in was able to hire exclusively people with 2+ years of experience up until recently. Now they're hiring people with no background in manufacturing at all (because they have no choice). I'm currently training a guy who used to work in a sauce factory.
