We Americans have lost track of the reason for holidays. Any holiday is, to us, an opportunity for vacation, parties and drinking. Seldom do we bother to use the special day to contemplate its meaning.
Take Labor Day for example. Why is working for a living so important that we dedicate a day to celebrate it? If you pay attention to the comments of your co-workers, it is hard to believe that most of them really enjoy it. Labor is an unpleasant necessity if you want to eat!
So I spent a portion of the day thinking about labor. And I came to this conclusion. Labor alone is the source of our wealth. Money does not grow on trees as my parents would say. It is not created by government. It is simply a means of exchanging the goods and services that we create for those created by other laborers.
Wealth is created by our labor. When we make a product or provide a service we create its value. And its value is due solely to our work. Gold in the ground is worthless. Only when someone digs up the soil and extracts the metal from the ore does it develop any value. Wheat in the field has no value until someone harvests it, grinds it into flour and bakes the bread.
We became a wealthy nation because we out produced the rest of the world. Throughout our history, our farmers, factory workers, writers, movie makers, doctors and all other workers created our great wealth simply by working hard.
Now the problem is that we have developed an economy in which the producers of wealth, the workers, are not allowed to keep the wealth we earn. Certain giant businesses, and especially the government, find ways to extract from us a major portion of the wealth we create. That might be OK if we were receiving goods and services equal to the value of the taxes and graft they take. But that is seldom the case. It is true that the protection provided to us by law enforcement and the military has value. The good roads that allow us to move from place to place have value. So does the effort to eradicate dangerous diseases and other damaging conditions.
Where we get ripped off is when thousands of bureaucrats sit in expensive office buildings and collect high pay for doing things that are of no real value to us. We are ripped off when hundreds of thousands of people receive money for which they did not work. Remember, there is no source of wealth other than the goods and services we create through our work. And when some are paid without doing work, it means that others are doing work without being paid.
Economic justice requires that we receive full value for our labor. Any other system is just another form of slavery.
Frank Gillispie is founder of The Madison County Journal. His e-mail address is frankgillispie671@msn.com. His website can be accessed at http://frankgillispie.tripod.com/
