Marco Rubio probably should have picked on someone other than philosophers. At the fourth GOP debate on Tuesday night, the Florida senator argued in favor of vocational education by underscoring its paycheck perks. "For the life of me I don't know why we stigmatize vocational education," Rubio said. "Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders than philosophers."
Nothing against welders — or vocational education — but that isn't true at all. Matt Yglesias, a Vox writer and former philosophy major, did the research and it turns out Rubio was about $30,000 off. The average annual wage for philosophy majors is $71,350. Welders, on the other hand, only make an average annual wage of $40,040.
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