I think your comments are a bit strong. I have known history graduates who made a successful transition to the business world.
Understood and I have liberal arts grads and music majors working for me and they do quite well. But, it takes 1-2 years to train them on the technical stuff that technical graduates already have internalized.
For example, currently a big issue for financial markets is whether countries such as Greece, Ireland, Portugual, Spain, and (in the long run) even Italy can keep the Euro as a currency. It is as much a political and cultural question as an economic one. NYT columnist Tom Friedman recently wrote a column "Can Greeks Become Germans?". To analyze the prospects of the Euro currency and European government debt, a deep knowledge of European history would be helpful.
Except Ireland, the elites in those nations are already German as they have bought into the German statist ideology.
Ireland has little in common with Greece, Italy, or Spain in the structure of its debt or its culture or its economy. Its debt crisis is similar to the USA's in most respects as its real estate rather than public service debt.
Regarding history as a career, tenure track history professor jobs are much scarcer than the supply of history PhDs, but many gifted people love knowledge for its own sake. Weighing intellectual interests vs. financial prospects is hard and depends on one's values (which evolve over time).
Its better to make history than study it!!
