My first OP in the new board format, I think. Anyway, the question is exactly what it says on the tin. This seems to have become a common phrase among politicians around the time of Bush II, but to my ear/eye it grates horribly. “Good” as an adverb is a corruption, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be “well-paid”?
Totally agree. The job is well-paid. The pay for this job is good.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a politician talk about “good paying jobs”.
I’ve heard a LOT about “good jobs” meaning ones with high pay. Or “Good, high-paying jobs” meaning those with things like a career path, benefits, security, and all that stuff. But never “good paying jobs”. Sounds like something our illiterate current President might say or tweet. But nobody else.
Yes, it’s prescriptively correct.
You can say, “It’s a paying job,” (meaning something like, “It’s a decent job.”)
And you can say, “It’s a good job.”
So there’s no reason why you can’t use both modifiers together, though you’d be using the two modifiers as coordinate adjectives, and–in writing–you would have a comma after “good.”
Saying, “It’s a good, paying job” is no less correct than saying, “It’s a good, decent job.” By extension, the plural form is equally correct: “We need more good, paying jobs in this town,” etc.
HOWEVER, this does not have the same meaning as, “It’s a well paid job,” or “We need more well paid jobs in the town,” etc
I don’t feel well paid jobs is correct. It seems to imply the job is being paid rather than the job paying the employee who is working it.
Also, paid is the past tense. People don’t want a job that paid well; they want a job that pays well.
I will concede that a good paying job should be a well paying job (or a job that pays well). But the use of good as an adverb is a ship that has sailed.
Normally, yes, but “paid” has a second definition in which it refers to the semantic role of the “goal” (i.e., the service or thing for which a person is paid): (Merriam-Websters) “being or have been paid for” (emphasis on the “for”).
In this case, “paid” is an attributive adjective derived from the participle form, (rather than the past form). These particular expressions can’t really be analyzed in strict grammatical terms, because they’re effectively idiomatic. Technically, you can indeed say, “It’s a paid job,” but without more context, it’s kind of a meaningless collocation. As a result, we tend to use these idiomatic phrases, like “well-paid job,” “poorly paid job,” etc.
I agree that “well paying” job is probably a “clearer” way to express the idea, but standard usage accepts both ways.
No, “paid” is not an adjective that derives from a participle, it is literally a participle. It is the passive participle of “pay”, functioning like an adjective because that is what participles do.
Since “pay” is a transitive verb, the passive participle applies itself to the object case of the verb. Hence, “well paid job” does mean that the job itself if being paid. It is not unreasonable to infer that the person doing the job is extracting that pay from the job, but the hearer is then forced to make that inference. Constructions that do not demand inference tend to be much clearer.
English has multiple levels of formality. Colloquial English is several levels down from the most formal, academic writing and is also beneath what I call “good writing,” i.e. the standard English used in newspapers, magazines, books, and their online equivalents. Almost all spontaneous speech is colloquial, when not using even lower forms filled with slang and solecisms.
If politicians or others are using the expression good-paying jobs in colloquial settings, it is perfectly okay. I’d go further, and say that “good-paying jobs” is standard for most descriptions. Anything else would sound funny.
I feel that “paid job” and “paying job” have different connotations. “It was a paid job” implies work that happened once and is done. “It was a paying job” implies work that was ongoing but is done.
To me “paid job” or “paying job” is to distinguish them from volunteer positions, internships, etc.
Similar to folks talking about their “day job” as distinct from their hobby playing in a band or volunteering at the food pantry, or etc. Their real work is their “day job” even if they work the night shift doing it.
You don’t have to go any further than Wikipedia:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia] A participle also may function as an adjective or an adverb. For example, in “boiled potato”, boiled is the past participle of the verb boil, adjectivally modifying the noun potato; in “ran us ragged,” ragged is the past participle of the verb rag, adverbially qualifying the verb ran.[/quote]
If it functions like an adjective, I call it an adjective. You can quibble about semantics, but the function is what matters–it’s not inherently anything. It’s the function that determines what it is.
Yeah, but it is or it will be are equally valid in this case, and neither implies a job that is done. The construction has nothing to do with the tense of the verb used with it.
Candidate Trump in 2015:
We have to take back jobs from Japan, and Vietnam, and Mexico, and virtually everybody that’s taking our jobs and ruining our manufacturing base. And we have to put people to work. Because the real unemployment number is probably 21%. People give up looking for jobs. And they no longer become a statistic. And it’s very unfair. So we have to put our country back to work. We have to get great jobs for people and good paying jobs for people. And we’re going to be just fine.
Joe Biden’s 2020 platform:
In this time of crisis, Joe Biden has a plan to create millions of good-paying jobs and to give America’s working families the tools, choices, and freedom they need to build back better .
Colorado candidate for… something, Diane Mitsch Bush:
“One, they want me to help lower the cost of healthcare. Two, I need to help build an economy that works for everyone, particularly good paying jobs, and [three], people want our public lands protected,” she said.
This article suggests my memory is not faulty and the phrase originated with Bush II (and that my grammar isn’t faulty either), but it doesn’t quote him.
If you completed work and were happy with the compensation you would say you were paid, ‘well’.
Thanks for the refs & education.
It would figure that some combo of Bush II or Trump would mis-use English and their malapropisms would find their way onto the political buzzphrase bingo card. Sheesh!
IMO Biden’s “good-paying” is slightly better than the others, but only by a hair. It sounds like they were trying to convert the necessary buzzphrase into something close(r) to standard English.
Tense is irrelevant to my example. I’ll move it to present:
I feel that “paid job” and “paying job” have different connotations. “It’s a paid job” implies work that happens once and is done. “It’s a paying job” implies work that’s ongoing.
OK, but I’m still not seeing the point. The only question is whether the modifier can be good or must be well. Nobody else is questioning paid vs. paying.
To me the “paying” in the expression is a substantive, either a gerund or a participle used substantively (although it is not clear there is any difference there) and good is an adjective modifying it. It is therefore perfectly correct. Does “well paying job” sound right? Not to me, which strengthens my position on this. YMMV.
It’s interesting. Without spending much time looking, Obama used the phrase on several occasions; so did candidate Hillary Clinton; even Jimmy Carter (but not until 2017); Kamala Harris; Bobby Jindal; Roy Cooper, the GOP House Organization, etc. Not to mention tons of “news” articles and/or opinion pieces.
But I can’t seem to find any examples of the term before 2000 (or really 2004). I don’t see any obvious references to George Bush saying it (other than your blog cite), but at some point around then it became a standard phrase for politicians/journalists/policy types. Would that “misunderestimate” had become as popular–I like that word.
The original post suggested “well paid” instead of “good paying” and I thought it’s worthwhile addressing that part.