Colleges, Biden, and Labor Day

Colleges, Biden, and Labor Day

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) Sept. 3/4, 2022

            One morning during my eighth grade year in school I handed my first period math teacher, Coach Durward Smith, a note from my parents. It explained why I had been absent the day before. In my mother’s barely legible handwriting it read, “Please excuse Roger’s absence yesterday. We had to keep him home to help dig sweet potatoes.”

            Coach Smith, an affable guy, read the note then looked up at me and said, "Hold your hands out.” After I nervously obeyed, he added, “Well, I see you really did dig sweet potatoes.” He was referring to the grimy sticky spots of sweet potato juice that had clung to my hands in spite of all efforts to wash them off.

            Recalling this occasion recently, I began to ponder the status of the work ethic today. Are Americans still hard workers? Have we become so educated that we now look down on labor and laborers? Are we teaching our children that work of whatever stripe is honorable and beneficial? How many members of Congress have never held a private sector job? Since our President has been in office since age 27, what could he know about the private sector or common labor?

            For anyone who wonders how we got from Plymouth Rock to President Biden’s loan forgiveness notions, consider the fact that when the Pilgrims landed in the New World in 1620, it was work or die, meaning produce your own food or die. Walmart had not yet reached the shores of New England. Frozen or processed foods had not been thought of. It would be 155 years before the sturdy settlers had a national government and 312 years before that government would  implement its first pervasive welfare system. Amenities we take for granted today being obviously unthinkable at the time, work was required of men, women, and children alike. Besides, did their Bible not declare that “he who will not work will not eat?”

            Nothing has undermined the rugged American work ethic as much as higher education. I remember when the “Get thee to college” chant began. Actually it began in the late 50’s. Which makes me wonder: Is the fact that so many product labels read “Made in China” a result of our half-a-century emphasis on higher education and our de-emphasis of labor skills? What happened to Industrial Arts?

            Has anyone noticed that when it comes to self-importance, acquiring great amounts of money doesn’t really puff people up so much, but education along with its degrees and titles does? When paid “contributors” or other guests on cable news are interviewed from their homes, why do they position themselves in front of their esteemed bookshelves? I would be pleased to see them in front of a barn, beside their lawnmower, or fresh out from under the hood of their car.

Just who are our essential workers today?  They are not college graduates. They are primarily truck drivers, electricians, plumbers, automotive mechanics, and farmers, to name only a few. The average age of plumbers in the United States today is 60, which should tell us something about our labor force and what we are not doing about it.

Truth is the nation is currently run by the Intelligentsia, college-educated people who have never worked on a car, driven a truck, plowed a field, or dug sweet potatoes. Very few political leaders are former surveyors like Washington, or store owners like Truman. A background in government, absent of any experience in labor or entrepreneurship, can turn one into a socialist who thinks government planning and government subsidy are and should be the cure for all ills. Thus, the doofus idea of college loan forgiveness, an idea that has non-college graduates paying the bill for college graduates.

Federal student loans and grants were initially intended to help low-income Americans. They have become what the Wall Street Journal has called “all-you-can-eat entitlements.” And we know why. The current President needs the votes of college kids.

Colleges have more deans than Amazon has delivery trucks. Colleges can profit from taxpayer subsidies without accountability. Their costs, like medical costs, have been out of whack for years. Student loan forgiveness enables colleges, leading them ever closer to the free-flowing spigot of government largesse.

So Monday is Labor Day, a holiday made official by Congress in 1894, the year of my hard laboring father’s birth. Now that is a significant co-incidence. My father hated for any of us children to miss school, but everybody’s gotta eat and sweet potatoes rot easily if not gathered soon.

Come Monday, my thoughts will turn to deplorable people, men and women like my parents who still keep things running. Happy Labor Day.

 

Roger Hines

September 1, 2022