Ahem. I believe I specified “…and get a good job” (which I think was obvious in context to mean “well-paying”, as opposed to “fulfilling”, which is also important, but not really germane here).
You can major in whatever you like, I’m not deriding that! But there’s this thing where you kind of have to plan your life choices around what you want to get out of life. If you want to be artistically and creatively fulfilled, and ideally have a trust fund, then go liberal arts all the way! If you want to have financial security, try to angle for a job that’s highly compensated.
Now, there’s a totally separate discussion to be had about a basic income, and the need for one in a society that’s becoming increasingly automated, because I think we can both agree that not only do we need historians and artists and art critics and all these things in a healthy society, but we need to make sure they’re financially viable choices, and also that we don’t have people that don’t really care about those things competing for those jobs just to get a paycheck!
But that aside, there will always be a disconnect between “socially valuable” and “financially valuable” jobs to some degree; that just seems baked into how we’re hardwired as a species, and a historian saying they should get paid like a physician isn’t going to get enough traction to make any changes. I mean, unless they write squishy pop-quasi-scientific books (ahem, Jared Diamond? Paging Mr. Diamond?).
