Off The Wall
Liz Lane writes…
“Rubio gave a nice shout out to welders on the debate last night (that may or may not have made Socrates roll over in his grave). We all know you support welders and their hard work, but should we go so far as to say, “We need more welders and less philosophers?”Hi Liz. Great question. Across the interwebs today, people are rushing to point out that the mean wage of a welder is actually lower than the mean wage of a philosopher – $40,000 vs. $71,000.
There’s an article on Vox that “debunks” Rubio’s claim. http://www.vox.com/…/…/9709948/marco-rubio-philosophy-welder.
Here’s another from CBS that “fact-checks” his statement. http://www.cbsnews.com/…/republican-debate-fact-check-was-…/
Based on these “revelations,” Rubio’s assertion that “welders make more than philosophers” is being dismissed out of hand.
Interestingly, no one has pointed out that last year, philosophers earned a combined total 1.6 billion dollars, whereas welders earned a combined total of $34 billion. Nor have I heard anyone explore the differences between mean wage vs. median wage, and the vastly different number such a calculation would yield, given the disparate size of each group, and the impact of high-earning outliers, particularly among the philosopher cohort. I suppose I could do all that here, but really, what’s the point? Numbers can always be twisted and turned to make whatever case the speaker wishes to drive home.
Personally, I’m convinced that more and greater opportunity exits in welding than philosophy. But I would not encourage one at the expense of another. That’s precisely how we’ve wound up with a workforce that’s both over-educated and under-trained. Never mind obscenely indebted. Also – it’s dangerous to conclude that one profession is superior to another simply because it pays more. Those kind of generalizations are fun but meaningless.
Having said that, I’m glad Rubio said what he said, because I know for a fact that employers are clamoring for welders. And I also know with certainty that a talented welder who is willing to go where the work is has an excellent chance to earn a six-figure salary. I have no idea if the same is true for a philosophy major, but I can assure you of this: an excellent welding program will cost a lot less than a Philosophy Degree from an excellent university. I can also tell you that the classified section of today’s paper is conspicuously void of openings for “Experienced Philosophers.” “Experienced Welders” on the other hand, appear to be in high demand everywhere.
Anyway Liz, to answer your question, I don’t think we need fewer philosophers – I think we need more philosophers who can weld. Or better yet, more welders who can philosophize. Welding and Philosophy are not opposites – they’re two sides of the same coin. Likewise blue and white collar. Labor and Capitol. Employer and Employee.
There’s nothing magical about learning a skill or earning a degree. What matters most is the same stuff that’s always mattered. A willingness to work hard, to master a skill that’s in demand, and to go where the demand is. Work is not about the color of collars, or the relative size of the paycheck. It’s about pursuing opportunities where they exist, and creating them where they don’t.
Mike
Philosophy gets an unfair rap, because some philosophers have gone off the rails. The fact of the matter is, we’re all philosophers contemplating to a greater or lesser degree the four questions occasioned by being human:
1. What is the nature of reality?
2. How do I know the nature of reality?
3. Who am I doing the knowing?
4. How shall I live?
Like it or not, we all ponder those questions at some point during our lives.
that was nice to read, what Mr. Rowe wrote
Sherm
Oh I agree! That’s why I liked his closing paragraphs.
Still, I stand by this:
That may be a case of throwing out the baby with the bath, but unlike Ellen Ripley’s recommendation it does at least leave the buildings standing.
I still like Harvey Mansfield’s 1940’s joke concerning Ohio State, since it expresses something about all manner of inflations suffered in the modern age, no less about students than about philosophers, and worse, about the promiscuous misuses of the poor bedraggled term philosophy (hell, in our time “historic”, philosophy’s replacement, has been similarly blown out like a planetary nebula into a vapor). Time was, that is, people were more appropriately niggardly in their expressions, using a term more often than not only where it was applicable, fearing, I suppose, to get caught saying nothing.
Mike Rowe is good as always.
From a response to what Rubio said.
@GeoffB
Many, many years ago when I was studying literature and philosophy at Mizzou, I had an agnostic professor. One day, during a graduate seminar, one of the students proceeded to launch into a tirade about Christianity generally and the Bible specifically, declaring that, among other things, the Bible was a worthless jumble of words and inane myths.
The professor, straight out of central casting with a cardigan and pipe, responded:
“Two things. Regardless of whether you believe it or not, dollar for dollar, the Bible is the greatest piece of literature in the history of Western Civilization. Second, if you don’t know it and refuse to learn about it, you have no business seeking a graduate degree in literature. Find something else to do.”
Not everyone needs to read the Greek philosophers, no. But I think everyone should read at least some.
That link seems to be buggered Ernst, but then, what else would we expect from Greek philosophers?
I keeed, I keeed
Philosophers are fine and all but, do not create wealth, they are paid from the wealth created by others. Welders create wealth by adding value to raw materials. It is simple really.
Nicely philosophized, bgbear. ;-)
Philosophy — the discovery of meaning out of apparent spontaneity — is rightly no more than a skill that informs any well-pursued vocation. It should never be pursued intentionally as a vocation in itself.
It was supposed to be a link to the Portable Greek Reader
but really, there are any number of good anthologies out there.
Changing the way people see the world is adding value.
The Dallas Cowboys’ Cheerleaders also don’t create wealth and are paid by the wealth created by others, so maybe in that sense philosophers are likewise some sort of ornament to the public business. What about churches then? On the other hand, both for the ancients and for us [though we moderns — following enlightenment philosophers — tend or pre-tend to make a distinction between philosophers and scientists which I personally don’t credit for much qua distinction] we now and again find a philosopher studying nature by means of his nominal leisure time (i.e., the Greek term from which arise our terms “school”, “scholar”, “scholarship” etc.) who will alight upon an idea or a discovery which turns out to generate all kinds of wealth more widely taken, once he or others spread the discovery beyond the bounds of the academy (another inherited word) in which that discovery was made. Not to say the point of the philosopher’s efforts was to make wealth, since he may have been merely unable to forego his curiosity about something he saw: just to say that such results aren’t unknown to fall out concomitantly, and so perhaps oughtn’t to go unnoticed by us.
I was watching an old episode of Danial Boone, about a couple of guys that made their living chasing down escaped slaves. So they were discussing the merits of slavery, and the chaser dude said it was necessary in society to have slaves to do labor so as to free up the thinker dudes time so they could do their thinking.
I thought it kinda funny, I hadn’t heard that one before, but reflecting on it I wonder if that isn’t how a lot of thinker dudes feel. It would explain our elite determined to import as many Mexican peasants into the country as possible…
I’ve always considered science to be a subset of philosophy, or to put it another way philosophy is meta to science.
It’s relatively easy to imagine Thomas Jefferson (who founded the eminently practical University of Virginia, but couldn’t manage his own business enterprises worth a fucking damn) thinking along those lines Lee, whereas it’s much more difficult to imagine Ben Franklin (who c0-founded the American Philosophical Association and made a shit-ton of money in his business affairs) thinking that way. But then, look at the character of the men from whom the thought arises: they chase slaves for a living, and likely intend to forgive themselves for that.
I hadn’t heard that one before
That’s pretty much what the Greeks and Romans thought.
Back in the day, what we call scientists were known as “natural philosophers.”