[compostor42]

Unions aside, there was the same butt-hurt regarding blue-collar oil field workers making 100k+. The New York Times ran endless articles complaining about the shale oil boom.

Non-elite flyover whites making good money seems to really upset a certain segment of the population. How dare they make a better living them me doing physical labor!

Most people have been taught to look down on blue-collar manual labor. Seeing them makes good money upsets them. Even the OP expressed his distaste for the oil-field workers.

[lambdapie]

Fair point, I thought you were saying before that critiques of union workers earning too much were really driven by this white vs blue collar issue, while now I see that what you were really saying is that the OP wasn't necessarily even talking about unions, just complaining about rich blue collar workers.

In fact, before I saw the rest of the thread I was going to ask for clarification about the original oil-field worker point.

I agree that manual work can have a high market rate even without unions, e.g. if it physically requires a very fit man to do the job, in addition to the right personality, dexterity, intelligence and reliability.

[compostor42]

Indeed. I don't disagree with you about the Unions at all.