It marks the symbolic end of summer and beckons the children back to school. It means a welcome day off for some, while it provides others with a chance for big pay day. It’s the first Monday in the month of September. It’s Labor Day.
This Labor Day marks the quadrennial “official” start of the Presidential election campaign. While many are tired of all the hot air and are hoping that the politicians will “knock it off”, the reality is that they are just getting ready to “kick it off.”
It’s ironic that on this Labor Day both Bush and Clinton are talking about creating jobs. Politicians creating jobs, I guess that’s a sign of the times. We have white chocolate, non-fat ice cream, passive exercise, non-alcoholic beer, plastic wood, and video magazines. Why not a President whose major focus is creating jobs?
Let’s rewrite the Constitution. Out with establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, and providing for the common defense. In with jobs, jobs, and more jobs!
I always thought it was the small businesses of this country that were hiring people and creating jobs. With all these claims about how many jobs the politicians are creating, it almost makes higher taxes sound like a good idea.
It’s ironic on this day that is set aside to honor working men and women that the self employed and small business owners don’t get their due credit. While the politicians talk about creating jobs and the union leaders talk about hard work, it’s the self employed and the small business owners that just keep getting the job done against what seems formidable odds.
Today, the most rapidly growing segment of “labor”, the self employed, willfully toil under conditions that might have been prohibited in another time. Their complaints are on issues such as health insurance, taxation, and regulations that make it difficult for small business to have access to capital. Who is addressing these issues that impact the ever growing number of self employed “laborers” on this Labor Day weekend?
Higher wages and improved working conditions can only come from improved productivity, increased capital investment, and competition. Only by making a bigger pie is there more to share. It is the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of the independent business owner that has made that pie grow. It is a result of our free and competitive economy and the efforts of small business that we celebrate the ever improving circumstances of working Americans.
“This election is about jobs.” As often as it’s repeated on television and in the press, don’t believe it. President’s don’t create jobs, small businesses do.
President’s do things like preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. They serve as Commander-in-Chief, make foreign policy, appoint judges, recommend measures to Congress, and make sure the laws of the land are followed.
It’s more of this plastic wood, non-alcoholic beer, non-fat ice cream nonsense to think President’s create jobs and are responsible for the economy. The economy runs in cycles, always has, always will. All that working men and women, the self employed, and the small business owners of this country need is a level playing field, a few more incentives, and a few less obstacles to get this economy going.
Our system is not perfect. There are inequities. Progress is not made uniformly. But the steady improvement of working conditions during this century are testimony that the system works. Free enterprise has been and will continue to be the engine of progress and the worker’s prime benefactor. Maintaining an entrepreneurial economy is the key to labor progress.
The opportunity to work for ourselves and the competition amongst employers for our services are the freedoms that we should be celebrating today. To allow the autocratic leaders of a few hierarchical organizations that can claim less than one in five workers as members to dominate the “labor” agenda is misleading.
In reality, the working conditions of organized labor are far better than for the self employed, save for one important ingredient, freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is the great intangible that small business owners sacrifice so much for. The real labor issues of this decade are the removal of the barriers that will enable the self employed to have equal access to benefits, capital, and markets.