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Matthew B. Crawford's The Case For Working With Your Hands

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In 2009, by publishing "The Case for Working with Your Hands", Matthew B. Crawford highlighted the importance of an undervalued job: trades. Workers, who require hands on work, confront many challenges that outsiders may not see. At the beginning of the article, Crawford outlined the increased of demand for technical jobs, "making the manual trades- plumbing, electrical work, car repair- more attractive as careers” (n.p). Although it is idealized as "the salt of the earth", in reality, workers are prevented from joining this field by family members (n.p). Believed to be no-brain work, the author argued that trades turn out to require a lot of effort and “metacognition” in order to “eliminate variables…The gap between theory and practice stretches …show more content…

One of the Industrial Revolution’s significant effects is that the price of products keeps going up. In addition, to compete with the bourgeoisie and manufacturers, the cost of hiring “tradespeople” fluctuates within very narrow limits (n.p). Instead of buying a new product, choosing to fix an old machine and making it work smoothly like a new one is such a smart choice for customers. The manual work has psychological impact by creating demand that clients had never had. It seems that physical jobs have become more necessary than …show more content…

As a matter of fact, nobody has a car repaired or has unique earrings made every day. Monthly bills, insurance, and gas have almost inflexible prices while “the business goes up and down” unpredictably (n.p). However, the writer believes that when working with passion and enthusiasm, technical jobs will make more money than paperwork and bring an interesting life. From my perspective, because of the loss of ability to afford for living expense, trades may face the enticement of money, alternatively, “charge more than a fair price” (n.p). Of course, money doesn’t bring happiness, but it is a requirement to reach that goal. Working with ambition to pursue goals may not bring expected results; it is necessary to prepare for that harsh

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