Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

endeavour3d t1_j4n65tc wrote

Reply to comment by Smirkly in So buying is unaffordable...what about building? by thebaerfetus

yeah but overall all older generations were shitting on the trades and non-white collar work for years, I'm 37 and through my entire life from childhood until probably a decade ago I was hearing everyone older than me constantly say how blue collar work was for losers. How if you wanted to get anywhere in life you had to goto college, that if you didn't, you'd be stuck being a plumber or laborer, or work fast food, people were shitting on garbage men even. It wasn't even just people, it was movies, tv shows, music, books, just about every bit of media from the last 50 years was mocking and deriding blue collar work.

It's only in the last decade that it's been turning around, but I still hear this mentality from people, usually the privileged rich douche types, but still sometimes from older people. But regardless, the damage is done, hardly anyone in my age or younger is getting into the trades because the stigma is already entrenched that it's deadend work even though right now it pays better than many white collar jobs.

29

Intelligent-Hunt7557 t1_j4olg1j wrote

I agree with the general trend of cultural warfare, but lotsa industries have gotten rich off overselling that sort of division to ‘both’ sides of the divide. Nursing grudges is profitable. Plenty of movies in the 80s I grew up in featured richies as d-bags and the heroes being Men at Work (!). It’s not at all clear to me how many of those families where the family had one type of job swore their kids would not go into their occupation, for their personal reasons. Same for military service? I wish we had a better spokesperson for labor issues because Mike Rowe is sort of a choad.

Americans love underdog stories but don’t love underdogs. Look at how many Murkins say they ‘support the troops’ but don’t support single-payer or nationalized health care.

You might even be too young for it, but there used to be folks called “Yuppies” and seemingly they were tacky and were subtly ruining everything. That glide path got folded into ‘the American Dream’ too. Nowadays it’s aspirational and trucks are status symbols not work trucks, for urban and rural alike.

6