Reply to Right wing grifter Christopher Rufo tells college-educated conservative men to go get jobs at Chipotle

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He's not wrong.

What is wrong is the way we've vilified jobs that don't require a college degree.

I graduated high school in 2000 and it was drilled into our heads that we would be total losers if we didn't go to college. The only kids who were even allowed into the VoTech program were the poor students (aka black) and the mentally handicapped students.

I got made fun of SO much growing up because my dad was a tow truck driver. Yeah, he drove a tow truck and never went to college, but he was also a minority co-owner. I had a great upper middle class upbringing. We had a nice house and cars. We always took a vacation for spring break and during the summer. My siblings and I also got to go to sleepaway camps during summer. We got to play any sports we wanted and always had gifts on our birthdays and on Christmas. We even had modest college accounts.

My brother is a bartender and people look down on that as well. He has consistently made $105k-$125k per year for the last 8 years that I've been doing his taxes. His wife is a GM at a local restaurant who makes $92k/yr plus bonuses. She made $127k in 2024.

Even though I'm older and I have a college degree, my brother has out earned me for most of our adult lives. His retirement account is also better funded than mine. I graduated with $14k in student loans, so not a crippling amount, but my first job in 2004 paid $39k/yr and I remember that year was his first year as a fulltime server and he made ~$52k that year and kept bragging how he didn't have $14k in debt.

My niece is working her way through college. She goes to GMU, lives at home, and works at Target, who does reimbursement for college. Yes, it's taking her longer, but she has very little debt. She'll graduate in May 2026 with her BS and she was supposed to have graduated in May 2025 if she followed the traditional 4-year plan. One year extra is not a huge deal, IMO, when you look at how little she's accumulated in debt. Whereas her older brother went balls-to-the-wall with loans for college and is now like $230k or $240k in debt in his 2nd year of law school. [/quote]

I am about the same age as you. Like you, my father was a truck driver, and I didn't get a degree until later in life.

I don't remember people looking down on me or others for working blue collar jobs, but I grew up in a small working class town. Most people didn't have degrees so what could they say? But if you grew up around upper middle class strivers, I can see this happening.

Remember, the late 1990s and early 2000s were still in the Tech Boom, with everyone saying they don't need a degree--instead they got tech certifications. It wasn't until the "Great Recession" that everyone was on the "get a degree/learn to code" bandwagon.[/quote]

My dad was a union electrician. It was a tough job very hard on the body. He also was blown up in an underground electrical vault that caused third-degree burns on 60% of his body. I still remember when I as the oldest child was dressing  his wounds from his burns. I was probably around 13 years old? Blue-collar jobs often extract an incalculable toll on the body. Children watching their fathers injured or disfigured or having to care for their fathers while they are themselves are still a child. People who valorize blue-collar jobs never mention the danger of them.

Anyways, after that, he drilled into our heads that you had to go to college and get a degree so you wouldn’t work your body to death. So that you’d be able to continue working until you were 60 and have a dignified retirement. Thank God he’s still alive today and enjoying his retirement but that’s a lesson I learned quite well. [/quote]

Another story to add here: my dad‘s best friend from his job as an electrician was killed while on the job. He was climbing a pole and was electrocuted. The news helicopters responded to the incident and showed his body hanging off the top of the pole dead. I remember watching the news with my dad that evening and it was on TV live and he was crying. His best friend was just hanging from the top of an electrical pole fried and dead. This was a guy who I remember going to his house for a barbecue and playing with his kids. That’s the reality of blue-collar jobs: people die and then we move on. [/quote]

Which is a perfect illustration why we need immigrants to do these jobs. [/quote]

My takeaway was that we need better job protections ….[/quote]

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