Mike Rowe has never shied away from engaging with and challenging his critics, and he recently shut down a man who expressed skepticism and negativity toward Rowe’s advocacy for trade work.
Rowe posted on Facebook that a man named Chad DeLong had challenged the assertion that there’s a nationwide shortage of construction trade workers. Instead, DeLong insisted that there are plenty of construction workers – they’re just unwilling to work for “sub-par poverty wages.” “That’s why these Mike Rowe types want to flood the labor market,” DeLong said. “Don’t believe any of that sh*t if you read it.”
Unfortunately for DeLong, he challenged the wrong person. Rowe hit back – and he hit back hard. “Obviously, I’m aware that some people refuse to work because they believe the pay is too low,” Rowe wrote. “People like that exist in every industry, and the construction trades are no different. But that doesn’t mean that low wages are the reason 6.3 million jobs are currently vacant. The fact is, starting salaries in the skilled trades rival or exceed those of many more popular careers.”
Rowe continued:
“I often post about opportunities in the skilled trades, but unlike your claims, mine are easy to verify. According to the [Bureau of Labor Statistics], 6.3 million jobs are currently available – the vast majority of which do NOT require a four-year degree. Many of those jobs exist in construction. I’m not making this up, Chad. It’s right there in black and white. So too, is the amount of college debt currently on the books – 1.5 trillion dollars. A rather tidy sum, considering half of those who borrow money for tuition don’t even graduate.”
But if cutting down DeLong with facts wasn’t enough, Rowe then hit him with a pair of hardball questions: “What is it you hope to accomplish by telling people that opportunity is dead? In other words, what is YOUR agenda?”
Those are two very good questions, indeed.
Once upon a time, America was heralded as the land of opportunity. But, unfortunately, somewhere along the way “opportunity” warped into “entitlement,” which has created a further mindset that there’s not enough opportunity to go around. But an opportunity is self-created, a fact that people like Rowe know to be true, and therefore in endless supply. But liberals like DeLong believe otherwise, and would seemingly rather doom Americans to a lifetime of dependency on the government.
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