EVERYTHING works on paper...
Posted on 05/19/2013 6:23:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
At an event on Friday the Mayor of New York City put his foot in his mouth…again. Michael Bloomberg attempted to give mediocre high school students some advice: skip college and become plumbers. He said students who were not above average should learn how to be plumbers instead of reaching for a career that would involve going to a prestigious college and obtaining a degree.
The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class. Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College — being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal. You don’t spend ... four years spending $40,000, $50,000 in tuition without earning income.
Not only does Bloomberg think that skipping college is a good plan, but he also went on to give some advice about finding jobs that won’t be outsourced. “It’s hard to farm that out ... and it’s hard to automate that,” he said. He went on to say that a number of studies indicate that people who learn plumbing skills have less debt and make more money than those who get college degrees.
An advisor who helps students with college financial planning who was also at the event was not completely supportive of Bloomberg’s comments. He said, “College is a good investment,” and continued, “The only schools that cost $40,000 or $50,000 like the mayor said are elite schools”.
So maybe it is time for Michael Bloomberg to lower his elitist standards. College degrees are a good investment and should be sought after. Not everyone has the ability to afford these elite schools, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other options for them to be able to attend college.
EVERYTHING works on paper...
My dad’s a plumber in NJ who owns the business he inherited from his father. As a child visiting dad on weekends, we would visit relatives’ houses so dad could pull roots from sewer lines, replace or repair water heaters, help remove water from basements and other things that provided us with homemade pierogis, chruschiki, babka, golumpki, etc., as well as praise about my father who never charged family, not even on weekends or holidays. Weekends also saw us inside malls before they opened, so dad could work on the fountains and other plumbing issues. Everyone at Woodbridge, Menlo Park, Brunswick Square, Quakerbridge, Short Hills, Jersey Gardens & Cherry Hill knows “John” - the guy who barely graduated high school; the guy who was held back in grammar school; the guy who tossed a cherry bomb down the toilet in Catholic school, and still beams about how high the toilet lifted from the floor.
The point is, I’m proud of my dad, and I’d like to tell Bloomberg where he can stick a golumpki.
On another note, my dad is in his 70s and he still works every day. For the last few years, I’ve tried to pursuade him to allow my now 17 yo daughter to spend a week working with him, but he won’t b/c she is a girl. His hard work ethic, and his humility have kept him grounded in a middle class lifestyle, but his ability to save allows him to rent a shore house on the beach a few weeks each summer so family can converge and visit together. It’s also allowed him to feed his crazy idea of installing an hydraulic lift in his garage so he can own and baby several old cars.
And lastly, my father earns way more annually than my husband who’s a retired Marine Officer, flying large passenger jets for a major airline for many years now. Joking about having my husband switch careers and become a plumber, my father laughed and said that there’s no money in plumbing anymore. Totally missing my half-joking point, his suggestion was to look at fire protection/sprinkler systems. If you can jump through all the hoops and training and certifications, you’ve got something valuable that everyone wants.
BLOOMBERG IS A FREAKING SELF-ABSORBED J@***$$.
Yeh, I think he actually found a nut with this advice
A ditch digger with honor is a thousand times better than any scum bag socialist loon.
So now you have academic classes full of kids acting out because they have no interest in the subject. I've personally seen those same kids, with a hammer or wrench in their hand, make a miraculous transformation into a mensch. I saw this when a horticultural club needed some raised beds built for the plants. The "bad" kids took charge of the building and were productive and happy. I've been saying for years, "Bring back the vocational schools, we need plumbers and carpenters and electricians--they will earn more than us!" and been called a bigot or worse.
Love your dad, and like everyone else here (and elsewhere), I cannot stand Bloomberg...but his overall message does make sense to me, which is that far more people enter college than can be supported by the market, and by doing so, they usually lose any chance they had to learn a trade. I’m not sure why that’s so, but I suspect that a kid who learns how to turn a wrench at age 15, rather than trying to learn it at age 20 (after dropping out of college) is simply going to be much better at it - and will not look at himself as a failure (rightly or wrongly).
I can do virtually any home or car repair that I need to (other than major stuff...and even that is not black magic to me - I know exactly what is being done, I just typically don’t have the manpower or the really heavy equipment). To this day (after decades of living in a house), I have yet to call an electrician, plumber, AC person, or just about anyone else, with the exception of warranty work. But I started around age 14 and had a pretty steep learning curve. By the time I started my senior year in high school, I actually was fixing more stuff than I was breaking (LOL). But the early start was critical.
As to your daughter - if she’s up for it, you MUST push dad as hard as humanly possible. One point that you might use is that even if she doesn’t actually do the work in the future (in her house), she will at least be able to talk the language. The few times that I had people work on my cars (and that’s very few), they could tell by talking to me that there was NO WAY I would be fooled by what they say...so they didn’t mess with me and try to talk up another $900 in ‘repairs’. They fixed what I wanted, I paid them, and everyone was happy.
I say go to college. Get an excellent education. Then do whatever you want to earn a living. Plumbing is a good option.
RE: I say go to college. Get an excellent education.
And how much money do you have to pay or go into debt for, for it to be worth it?
This Bloomberg guy sounds like a OK dude who knows where his towel is.
I also put my wife through 4 years of college.
ALL WITHOUT GOING INTO DEBT.
My wife and I slept on a box springs, cooked on a hot plate, ate on a card table.
I'd do it again. It's the best money I've ever spent.
I also sent each of my children through college 3 times.
I also established a college scholarship fund to educate people who couldn't otherwise go to college. I don't know how many I put through.
Furthermore--although she paid all her expenses--I helped my mother get through college--by studying with her, explaining subject matter to her, etc. I actually enrolled with her for her last two courses, studied with her, and got her through. It was during the summer after I graduated from high school. She graduated with a bachelor's degree.
My father was never able to go to college--a great tragedy because he was a brilliant man with a thirst for knowledge.
I have never stopped learning. After all this, and after our children were grown, my wife and I enrolled in college together and studied geology, computer science, music, and German language. Then I enrolled as a full time music student. I also studied music and the French language privately. I am now finishing Rosetta Stone Level 5 French and am also studying Rosetta Stone German and Spanish.
Yes. College is well worth whatever it takes.
And after all this, I have no problem being a plumber or anything else. The main purpose of education is not financial--though I strongly advocate prosperity, fiscal responsibility, and wealth.
Problem is all but a few private colleges are nests of the worst depravity and hardcore commie vipers. Other than that, you could be right.
Two of my close relatvies are blue collar workers and one is a full on genius. She chose her line of work so she doesn’t have to work in an office which she hates. She prefers to do useful work for a decent wage and work on her own.
The other one knows several languages and has many other excellent intellectual attributes.
I also have relatives that are multiple degreed and have stupid leftist loons.
OOps - ARE stupid leftist loons.
Best advice I’d heard from him in years. Well...
At least a 2 year degree would be wise for every wannabe wage earner.
“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” - John W. Gardner
I’m not a plumber - but after seeing what they charge (and my mechanic, welder, driller, etc.) - they seem to do okay. PLUS - they are always talking about their latest (or upcoming) fishing or hunting trip. The welder goes to Africa once a year on big-game trips!
Maybe I'd better rethink my position on this.
Thanks for your insights--and guidance.
Are there smart educated plumbers? I guess it's possible, but they are as rare as four leaf clovers.
The vast majority of all manual laborers are what they are because they couldn't be what they really wanted to be. Face it, not many kids sit around dreaming of being a yellow pages plumber.
If you are smart and you want to work with your hands you become an engineer. If your smart and plumbing fascinates you, you become a hydraulic engineer and you design and build whole plumbing systems on city wide or state wide scale, you help design and construct dams that provide water to entire regions of the country, you don't fix peoples leaking toilets. Who do you think makes those plans the plumber is holding? On complicated projects, do you really believe they just hand the plans over to the plumber they dial up in the phone book and say good luck! or is there an engineer that is overseeing the plumbers every move? Face it, anyone who is fixing other peoples toilets settled because they couldn't hack it at a higher level.
In America, the man who comes to fix the sink or the woman using the pneumatic hammer on the street outside watched Masterpiece Theatre on TV last night, plays the sitar, is currently reading War and Peace in Russian, is an expert on dinosaurs, likes opera, is just finishing Level 5 Urdu on Rosetta Stone--and used to be a neonatal nephrologist.
Today's world holds great promise--if we can keep the lunatics from blowing it up--or, of more imminent threat, returning it to the Dark Ages (which the decadent Left seems determined to do).
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