Us and Them

Today's NY Post cites the following very pertinent event:

...A passerby less than thrilled with the Midtown shoeshine hustler's sales pitch yesterday "took his anger out on me because of his own dirty shoes," Ward sniffed.

The 43-year-old shoeshine pro with two decades in the business had gone into his usual spiel from his perch on West 47th Street and Sixth Avenue -- pointing out that the well-dressed man's leather kicks could use a $5 deep polish.

"Why don't you get an education, so you can get a real job!" the man retorted, before taking his swing.

Like many people of his generation, the "man" in question, the one who swung his briefcase at the head of the shoeshine vendor, has bought into the idea that a "real job" can't possibly involve honest labor and effort and that an "education" is what one gets when he is presented with a college degree.

This is patent nonsense and every disinterested observer knows it. It is common knowledge that a desk jockey is the most redundant of parasites on an economy and that a modern college degree is merely a certificate attesting to the ownership of liability for a portfolio of student loans with which the newly "educated" is to be burdened for the rest of his elongated adolescence.