During a five year period between 2000 and 2006 58 men and 23 vessels were lost in the Pacific in the line of doing their job - catching fish. This year in the US over 1,500 construction workers, 800 miners, 140 farmers and 140 fishermen will die doing their line of work. According to collected data the most dangerous job in the US is timber cutting. The death rate among timber cutters is 118 per 100,000. It is followed by fishers (71 per 100,000), pilots & navigators (70 per 100,000) and structural metal workers (58 per 100,000). During the 1990s Alaskan shellfish industry averaged a death rate of 400 per 100,000. This year around 150 policemen will die “in the line of duty”. There are 800,000 policemen in the US.
So let us honor the men who die so we may have fresh crab and good timber.
Oh wait, they don’t actually care if we “honor them” or not? How come? I thought it was our duty to get all squishy about people dying doing hazardous, well-paid jobs?
What am I missing?