Why are surgeons paid more than brick layers?

[Dragonfli]

148. A bricklayer's apprentice spends all day mixing mortar and hauling heavy block for

a couple hundred dollars a week and lives in desperate poverty with many injuries he dare not speak of (unless he wants to be labeled pussy and not called as a helper anymore.)

He must do this (like most highly skilled tradesmen) until he is a proficient helper that knows how to mix mortar with the body strength and stamina to do the trade work (very few tradesmen of any kind get to avoid a sun up to sun down day).
Next he gets to be a starting journeymen doing all the crappy work the experienced and expert guys don't want to or have to do at their level of expertise for maybe a hundred more dollars a week for about five years.

When I learned my second trade I went into several thousand dollars of debt to survive the time it took to make a near living wage.
That is all that is at the end of it no matter how much talent, skill, knowledge and hard work it takes to be a tradesman - a NEAR living wage.

I know very few brickies in their fifties with knees shoulders and hand joints that are better than a 70 year olds.

So many of you so clearly devalue the tradesmen that create your world for you so that you can live in comfort making 10 times as much without destroying your body to do so.

Most of the trade work done on non-government jobs that are not high rises is work done by contractors and tradesmen with no hope of getting in a union, we would love to as it approaches far more closely a living wage, what this means is many men have no union to support their safety or help them get benefits, some are having trouble these days even finding an on the books job and have to take a 1099 hit on an already inadequate income.

So many people here are so clueless about how much REAL hard work, skill, talent and work ethic is expected of craftsmen (and for so little!), even tho these are the people that build our beautiful cathedrals mansions and public treasures.

So much disconnect, no wonder the party has become so conservative.....