Can bullshit jobs be high paid?

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Economic blogger Jason Murphy says they can at Crikey:

Australia’s services industry is booming. But the transition away from traditional industries (manufacturing etc) is making some people extremely nervous. The old good jobs are going, they say.

This idea is the prime focus of a 2018 book by Jennifer Rayner, titled Blue Collar Frayed. Rayner argues: “For blue-collar blokes, work has a meaning and social context that simply isn’t found in many of the other jobs our economy is now creating. However incorrectly, teaching and caring are seen as lacking expertise or art, belonging to the domestic realm of women’s work. Retail and hospitality is what your kids do for video game money, not serious work for grown-ups. Driving is respectable enough but there’s no finished product to stand around at the end of the day, no bit of work that testifies to your skills.”

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.