- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
but "the manual trades offer guaranteed employment at relatively high wages"? Does she even KNOW anyone in "landscaping, construction, carpentry, metalworking" etc.? My brother is an amazingly skilled carpenter. He has trained with some of the best furniture makers around. In his major city, when homes were going up and being remodeled, he was in great demand for his cabinetry. He has NEVER had insurance or any other benefit--he has always been employed as an "independent contractor," meaning no benefits, no job security, and he has to insure himself against workplace accidents. And this was when times were good. My sister is a metalworker by night, office worker by day, because her "manual trade"--again, one in which she's one of the best--doesn't bring in enough money to live in her city. And landscaping? Does she even think the guys doing that are being paid minimum wage? I share the wish that manual trades in the US were more valued, as opposed to the ephemeral "skills" required in highly paid jobs like management and finance. But it doesn't take an economics degree to see that students are going to college to get a better paycheck, not out of some bizarre snobbery.
I don't know why I bother to beat my head against the Paglia wall. I haven't read through the letters thread yet, but I know what's there: people like me, with their ludicrous little impassioned replies, the faction who threatens to drop their premium subscriptions every time Camille's column runs, and the conservatives crawling out of the woodwork to laud Camille's every stale statement as "refreshing." "Thank you for being so refreshing" they say, about statements that would be regarded as hackneyed if anyone on the right trotted them out, but since a professed leftie is saying them, ooh, so innovative.
