Labor Day, yes, a holiday pushed through legislation after US Military and police opened fire on unionized strikers during the Pullman strike. This arms blunder in fact opened the door for a sweeping change of labor in the U.S. and now we memorialize it with barbeques, heavy drinking, pools, sun-tanning, banning of white shoes, staycations, last weekends, so on.
In Wisconsin, where the Republicans have all but banned the labor unions, Labor Day takes on a whole new meaning, elevating it to battleground. And it should. This is just another example of our country forgetting what made it great in the first place.
Ayn Rand hated the labor unions too and in her sprawling, bloated, at-times-beautiful but more often just silly opus ATLAS SHRUGGED
she says that the workers wouldn’t have jobs without the hardworking men at the top. And sure, that’s true. But it’s a symbiotic relationship. Without owners to run the business, there could be no jobs, right? Owner needs the workers or else who will run their furnaces and electrical lines? Who will exchange their work for less money than it’s worth? And yes, owners can get anybody to do their work. But then you’re left with factories in China poisoning our children’s toys or factories in Mexico churning out disenfranchised workers who run across the border to the U.S. where the same people who own those factories complain about the illegal immigrant problem.
she says that the workers wouldn’t have jobs without the hardworking men at the top. And sure, that’s true. But it’s a symbiotic relationship. Without owners to run the business, there could be no jobs, right? Owner needs the workers or else who will run their furnaces and electrical lines? Who will exchange their work for less money than it’s worth? And yes, owners can get anybody to do their work. But then you’re left with factories in China poisoning our children’s toys or factories in Mexico churning out disenfranchised workers who run across the border to the U.S. where the same people who own those factories complain about the illegal immigrant problem.
And finally, we are left with life the way it currently is – our greatest minds have dedicated themselves to computer works or to middle-man industries – finance, import/export, development – without any thought to the fact that their willingness to move factories overseas in some sort of owner’s strike is taking us from being producer to being middle man and consumer.
So with Labor Day over and all of our minds fighting the hangovers from our fun weekends in the sun, we need to turn our eyes to the future. Stock market’s dying. American manufacturing is at an all-time low. And politicians are caving to special corporate interests at an alarming rate (Wisconsin outlawing unions, Obama lifting smog restrictions and naming GE, a massive multinational that got a tax refund greater than the GDP of some small African countries, to a cush corporate government post) which leave more of the work on the laborer and less on the men at the top while said topliners get the privileges. Which will only last until the middle class is completely gone and no longer consumes. And the lower class goes elsewhere for better opportunity. And leaves America the hollow shell of what it once was.
Happy Labor Day. While it lasts.
