demand. shameless plug. we re going to do it again next month. work ethic scholarships at mike rowe works. doug , we re moving the needle in a modest way, but it startsi by tapping the country on the shoulder, as you have done, and remindins yog them tht real jobs still exist. eleven million o f them are out there right now.ere. the opportunities aree everywhere. don t let anybody tell you otherwise. and they should have higher status. sai i mean, i love what you saidrgi. about these are marginalized people. that s exactly right. s exactlthese are the people. the guys work at asphalt plants. us take it possible for us t travel are marginalized,ginali and that should not be thezeshod case. and thank you fobe ther everythg doing to change that t background. great to see you. haso what is the key to happines ? since this is e thisa segment, t about happiness, we thought we d get a little closert we wot we re about to speak to a man who was very unhappy is a young man and who is happy
taxpayer with the bill. he s thinking about canceling up to $10,000 with an executive order which would cost the government over $300 million. mike rowe is here to react, he s got a brand-new season of how america works. so good that my advice help to your career early on, mike. the thing that drives me crazy that makes me so mad is that no one is thinking about this problem because of the words they use. forgiveness doesn t tell you where the money is coming from. it should be called soft. i will forgive it come i would happily forgive alone, but you still have to pay it back. this makes me crazy. my foundation focuses on work ethic scholarships and we were at those scholarships to people who affirmatively do not want to purchase a four-year degree peer they want to be trained. plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians, so forth. we assisted 1400 people, give it
away about $7 million in work ethic scholarships. when i hear the story and when i see it framed out, what i hear is the government asking those people to pay specifically for the degrees that have been purchased out an incredible multiple with impunity. it is breathtaking to me. these people, many of them have work trucks and they have 40, $50,000 worth of tools that they borrowed to get. and nobody at any where ever it talks about forgiving that. including me. because personally, look, you bought it. figure it out. so it gets real personal really fast. i was come back to the same question, which is forgiving the loans. something that will nudge the universities to drop the cost of tuition. and the answer is of course, no. and in the last 50 years, nothing in our country has
dirty jobs and i would say 280 of them were fan suggestions, so all the ideas came in from them, so that s really great. i love the dream score. if we want to color-blind society, i don t really know what to say about policies that revolve entirely around color. how do you get away from it? at some point, you know, there s the whole leveling of the playing field thing, i get it, but the man talked about a color-blind future. if we re ever going to get there i ve got this thing called a sweat pledge in my foundation and people have to sign it. it s kind of an old throwback to the boy scouts but it s 12 simple statements of belief, things like personal responsibility, delayed gratification and so forth, it has been deemed recently as all right. greg: of course! and the questions that come now every year we ve given away may be 1400 these work ethic scholarships but every year now more and more, how many women, how may people of color?
we continue to lend money to kids who can t pay it back. the gap grows wider as unemployment rises. we continue to incentivize people to stay home rather than get out and do the very jobs you re afraid we ll look back on two decades ago. i d be a plumber. i wouldn t go to college. plumber. permission? right. my foundation has awarded $5.5 billion in work ethic scholarships. we don t give money to kids who want to pursue a four year degree. plumber, pipe fitters, welders, many who are facing six figures. i get to circle back every year and talk to them about things like job satisfaction and meaning in their work and not to get all ernest on this ironic show, but it s really, i mean, to your point, greg, if you can find the people who have