It seems that some or all of this post is based on a seriously flawed notion of what lends prestige to a job. For example, > The electrician who comes and

It seems that some or all of this post is based on a seriously flawed notion of what lends prestige to a job. For example, > The electrician who comes and wires your house has a less > prestigious job than the electrical engineer who manages vague > projects within a large organization. So, in other words, the electrical engineer's job is more prestigious because... it's less useful? Ignoring completely the assumption that "vague projects within a large organization" are less useful than an electrician's work, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the barrier to entry is far higher for an electrical engineer than for an electrician, or that the former nominally pushes the forefront of new technology while the latter, while certainly performing a useful task, does little more than repetitively apply procedures dictated by various building codes? I guess a doctor is only more prestigious than an EMT because the former is probably a better golfer than the latter on account of his/her massive excess of free time? I'll admit that I haven't read The Theory of the Leisure Class; perhaps someone who has can confirm/disconfirm the OP's interpretation of same? It seems to me that, for example, a possibly better interpretation has to do with the public's level of understanding of one's job: the EE's "mysterious projects" are more prestigious because they somehow seem magical. Of course, this isn't really consistent with the example of the scientist who works in a lab (seems pretty mysterious to me!) versus the one who writes grant proposals all day (ugh), so I think I still don't get it.