Just hours after protesters nationwide hit the streets demanding a minimum wage increase, Marco Rubio took to the podium at Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate and noted a higher minimum wage isn’t needed but rather an America where hard work and perseverance lead to success. In other words, higher wages don’t come from government.

“Here’s the best way to raise wages,” Rubio said. “Make America the best place in the world to start a business or expand an existing business, tax reform and regulatory reform, bring our debt under control, fully utilize our energy resources … repeal and replace ObamaCare, and make higher education faster and easier to access.”

But he didn’t stop there. Instead, he immediately emphasized the importance of vocational training. “For the life of me,” he added, “I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education. Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.”

Apparently, them’s fightin’ words. After all, it’s one thing to say America needs more trade professionals, but dare to question the plethora of philosophers and all of a sudden you’re giving Socrates an extra dose of hemlock.

In truth, Rubio is on to something, in more ways than one. Primarily, he was making a sweeping generalization aimed at a particular audience: minimum wage earners. Want a job that pays better than the McDonald’s drive-thru? Don’t major in philosophy (i.e., shorthand for something not practical) only to be a higher-paid burger flipper. Go to trade school and learn how to weld.

Don’t get sidetracked by literally comparing the earnings of welders with the highest-earning philosophy majors in white collar jobs. That completely misses the forest for the trees.

But there are some numbers that work in Rubio’s favor. Consider, for example, that work in skilled trades — and training for those trades — has significantly declined in America in recent years. For the past six years, skilled trade job vacancies have proven the hardest to fill in the United States, according to Manpower Group, a human resources consulting firm. Furthermore, as Forbes reported two years ago, in 2012, 53% of America’s skilled-trade workers were 45 years and older, while nearly 19% were between 55 and 64.

It wasn’t accidental that Mike Rowe’s “Dirty Jobs” series on the Discovery Channel highlighted the importance of the trades. Blue-collar work is an American tradition — and one that has made the American Dream possible for countless individuals and families. Jobs in the skilled trades are waiting, but we’ve discouraged young people from pursuing them.

On top of that, many trade jobs are now being taken by hard-working Hispanic immigrants. Rubio takes a lot of criticism for his stance on immigration, but it’s obvious here that his message is more Americans should be filling these jobs.

Additionally, the colleges so many portray as the only path to success have too often become knowledge-free havens for leftist drivel — a fact not lost on Rubio. While we dissuade people from honest blue-collar work, we push them towards an education designed to transform them into leftist lemmings, with massive student debt to boot. Rubio’s observation that America could use fewer philosophers clearly hints at the tendency in colleges to teach things that don’t matter rather than real-world marketable skills. At the University of Iowa, for example, students can take a course in “The American Vacation”; at Georgia State, they can study “Kanye vs. Everybody”; and at Occidental College, students can spend an entire semester immersed in “Stupidity.” Thankfully, there is no prerequisite for that one.

Finally, given the philosopher-king in the White House, it’s quite possible Rubio was emphasizing that empty philosophizing may make someone a decent community organizer or phony “constitutional law professor,” but it didn’t transform a particular man with precious little real world experience into an effective leader. Rubio may very well have been intimating that a blue-collar upbringing, such as his own, is more reflective of the fabric of America than the experiences of a narcissistic Ivy League-educated ideologue who does not, in fact, share our values.

Unfortunately, instead of recognizing Rubio’s comment for what it was (an endorsement of skilled trades) and what it might have been (a commentary on the sad state of higher education today), some conservatives accused him of excoriating intellect altogether. The Federalist’s Rachel Lu, for example, said Rubio reserved his “contempt for the intellectual pillars of Western Civilization.” And The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto claimed Rubio was the worst offender of the debate in “the bashing of philosophers and philosophy.”

Good heavens, one would think the man destroyed the Republic — both the book and the nation! But apparently his comment, while connecting thoroughly with average Americans, soared over the heads of the wisest scribes. Which, some might say, merely confirms the truth of his words.