Posted on 11/11/2015 3:08:41 PM PST by conservativejoy
Rubio: 'We need more welders and less philosophers'
At Fox Business Network's Republican presidential debate, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) argued that increased vocational training and other measures would be more effective at helping American workers than raising the minimum wage. (Fox Business Network)
During the fourth Republican debate, Marco Rubio picked up a point touched on by Rick Santorum in the undercard debate earlier in the night. 'Welders,' Rubio said, 'make more money than philosophers.' Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler looked at the idea, but we thought it could use a visual.
Using data from the Web site PayScale, we can look at the introductory and median incomes of both professions. In 2008, philosophy majors started at about $40,000 a year — about the same as what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says first-year welders make.
But over the longer term, philosophy majors make more. Mid-career welders make $22 an hour, according to PayScale, compared with over $80,000 for philosophy majors.
Santorum's point was that there were a lot of welder positions available, which is a very fair point. Philosophy majors may make more — but if you can't get a job, that won't do you much good.
Best post of the night.
At least they don’t have to worry about illegals taking their jobs like welders do.
That’s true. Although when Rubio was saying this I was thinking, “what are they going to weld? There’s no manufacturing happening here.” Rubios arguments were all meaningless last night. Just a bunch of words strung together without meaning.
I think the bigger issues are that
1. There aren’t THAT many jobs in the skilled trades. Yes, there are temporary shortages in some areas, but it wouldn’t take all that many trainees in raw numbers to swamp the fields.
2. Many kids, bless their hearts, just don’t have the capabilities to do well in many skilled trades. They don’t have the mind for it, the physical endurance, or whatever else. Skilled trades can become quite intricate and complex and there are definite IQ thresholds below which people just don’t do well in them.
These are difficult issues, and lack easy solutions.
And it all depends on what kind of welder you are. If you are just a junkiron, (structural welder), you aren’t making much more than a basic welder. However, if you can weld pipe and/or do exotics, you wage scale goes way up.
Yep.
A good pipe welder can go on the road and make a killing.
We’re just coming out of our fall shutdown, and the welders and fitters we just let go were all headed down to the gulf coast for $50/hr working seven twelves, all OT is doubletime, and $120 per diem (non-taxed living expenses for travelers) on top of that.
A lot of these guys only work 6 - 8 months out of the year. They’ll make their big money in the spring/summer/fall turnaround seasons and take the winter off, and still make 200k a year.
The folks you describe are the very Americans whose jobs are taken by illegal immigrants. Marco wants those illegals to get green cards and then citizenship.
Agreed.We send them all,and I mean all, back to their “jurisdiction thereof”.
The only problem is welding is tedious and boring as hell.
Philosophy majors aren’t studying British empiricism today. Today’s courses would more likely be studying diversity as a philosophy.
He has an overall very valid point. How much does a good BMW mechanic make? In the marine industry, a good diesel mechanic is making over $100K a year. It’s all about the trades. There is a lot of money to be made in the trades, the young lazy 20 years privileged kids need to actually apply themselves. Willing to bet, the vast majority of 20 some year old males dont know the difference between a Phillips and a regular screwdriver as an example, but they know how to look like an a__ o n Facebook
This is a bad example to make that point given that there are currently 250,000 welding jobs unfilled.
“The only problem is welding is tedious and boring as hell.”
—
So is philosophy !
.
There are many welding jobs available and few welders to fill them. I am a retired pipe fitter, good welders are hard to find that can pass xray. On a second note, some of the best welders I ever worked with were either asian or pacific islanders. Have worked with a many very good Mexican welders, very few black welders but some of the best were white Americans but they were few.
I agree. It is so obvious the gopeeeee has their new backup candidate (Rubio) picked out with all the clamoring about his supposed numbers going up. Its bullshite and nothing more.
Too bad he didn’t take the line from a grammarian. If he had, he might have used the correct ‘fewre’ instead of ‘less’ which only applies to measured not counted things.
Touché
I know several welders that make well over $100.000. One used to work for me.
Our best welder on this turnaround is a Philippino, and our best daily maintenance guy is Dominican. We’ve got two younger Mexicans (non-illegal) who are pretty good, a black guy who’s good if you can find him, and an old white goldenarm who happens to be the only guy on site certified for aluminum and titanium.
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