Today is Labor Day, sometimes jokingly described as the day when Americans honor work by taking the day off. We hope you have a safe and fun holiday weekend with your family, and enjoy this special Labor Day edition of the newsletter.
It’s also the time during Election Years when Americans who are not political junkies finally start paying closer attention to the candidates, assessing their characters and comparing their words to their records – or in the case of the current crop of “Democratic” socialists, comparing their newly moderate rhetoric to their insane, radical social media posts that they tried to delete. Some of them try to defend their communist, anti-capitalism rants by claiming that they’re just “pro-union” or “pro-worker” (as opposed to pro-work – few of them have ever done a full day of real work.)
These days, it’s easy for free market capitalist conservatives to distrust labor unions because of their corrupt leaders or one-sided leftist politics that are often in conflict with those of their members (more on that later.)
But Labor Day reminds us of when unions were more interested in protecting workers than in protecting the jobs of union bosses and Democrat politicians. Labor Day observances unofficially began around the turn of the 20th century as a celebration of the union movement, which was fighting truly dangerous and exploitative working conditions, not to mention violent strike-busting tactics. Those kinds of conditions are not beneficial to labor or management.
Workers who get good pay, reasonable hours and a safe workplace are motivated to work harder and make their employers profitable. America’s prosperity and world leader status were the result of shared benefits between labor and management. Recruiting good employees, treating them well, and giving them a stake in the outcome is good business. When labor and management are partners, everyone wins: stockholders, management, workers, and most importantly, consumers.
After years of vicious, one-sided Trump vilification, and a blizzard of lies about his record, the quick turnaround in so many areas served as a reminder to Americans that before the Chinese unleashed a virus that knocked the wind out of our economy during his first term, President Trump wasn’t just helping to bring back jobs, but also helping workers across all demographics. The strong job market and record low unemployment meant companies had to offer higher pay and more benefits to attract good workers. Unemployment was at near-record lows across all demographics, and real wages were rising faster than inflation for the first time in decades. (Despite Biden’s claims of inheriting an economy in “free-fall,” he actually inherited a 1.4% inflation rate and a strongly rebounding economy. It took 18 months of his policies to crush GDP growth and get the inflation rate up to 9%. Or as Kamala Harris described that, “Bidenomics is working!”) Now that Trump is back and removing low-wage illegal immigrant labor, wages for working Americans are finally rising faster than inflation again. And just last week, we saw a report that job creation in August was three times what economists predicted, and Trump is helping to create real, tax-generating private sector jobs, not government jobs.
That’s how cutting needless regulations and getting government out of the way of job creation benefits everyone. After the pandemic and Biden’s Inauguration, businesses only offered higher wages and benefits to attract employees because “free government money” made it more lucrative for people not to work than to work. But as always with “progressive” ideas, reality eventually intrudes. Like the fact that there’s no such thing as “free government money.” Government money is either taxed away from people who earn it (disincentivizing productivity), borrowed from our grandchildren (increasing the national debt), or printed (causing runaway inflation.) All of those things have dire consequences that we’re still living with.
Thanks to all the endless giveaways on the tab of productive workers, the national debt exploded from $22.7 trillion in pre-pandemic 2019 to $30.8 trillion in 2022. That was 123% of the entire US GDP. As of this writing, it’s grown to a record of over $40 trillion, or over $9 trillion added in just four years. Having that much more debt than the total value of the economy is not sustainable.
Fortunately, the period during which both the White House and Senate were in the hands of a party that is openly hostile to capitalism and doesn’t have a clue how businesses work has ended, but if Republicans don’t turn out and vote in November, it could come back even worse because the candidates are so much worse. They’re turning from big-spending taxaholics into outright socialists and communists who literally want to destroy capitalism and abolish private property rights.
Before this, few elected Democrats had even worked in the private sector or run a business. The latest crop have nothing on their resumes but “community organizing” (i.e, being professional agitators.) They’re only interested in government as a tool to exercise raw power and to throw another trillion dollars of other people’s money onto their dumpster fire of fiscal irresponsibility. And it’s only getting worse, as our major cities are being taken over by mayors who are inexperienced, unqualified socialists.
Sadly, one of the reasons the Democrats hold so much political power is because of the longtime support, monetary and otherwise, of powerful union leaders. For instance, Biden was hailed as the most “pro-union President ever,” thanks to his support of laws forcing workers to join unions against their will, and his proclivity for creating so many new unionized government jobs, like for 87,000 new IRS agents.
Union leaders are supposed to look out for their workers’ interests, but does anyone seriously believe that the politicians they’ve helped install into power are primarily concerned with what American workers think are their best interests, as they demonize patriotic working Americans as “semi-fascists” and terrorist threats, badmouth capitalism, fuel inflation, crush American industries with onerous regulations, fling open the borders to low-paid foreign workers, tax away job-creating business profits, and drive jobs and American capital overseas to nations like Saudi Arabia and China?
A union is supposed to act as the voice of its workers, but too many unions prioritized advancing the Democrats over their own members. For instance, many energy and pipeline industry workers supported Trump, but their bosses worked to elect Biden…who, upon taking office, promptly picked up his executive order pen and stabbed them in the back with it, killing the Keystone XL Pipeline project, going to war on the domestic fossil fuel industry, and destroying many good-paying union jobs.
Union bosses pretended to be shocked that he did exactly what he’d promised to do. UAW leaders were angry that the Biden Administration was more interested in the leftist pipe dream of forcing us to buy electric cars we don’t want than in protecting the jobs of American auto workers. Likewise, their profligate spending ignited inflation that eroded paychecks, costing the average household $700 more per month for the same goods and services than they paid when Biden took office. His open border policy flooded the nation with illegal immigrants who are taking away job opportunities and driving down wages for low-skilled American workers. That also contributed to a housing crisis that lifted home prices to record levels, putting the dream of home ownership out of reach to the young generation. It’s no wonder rents are falling in areas were Trump has focused ICE deportations.
This was particularly hard on minority workers, who were finally seeing real wage increases for the first time in decades under Trump 1.0. That’s why the Democrats have to work so frantically to convince minorities that Trump and all other Republicans are “RAAAAACISTS!!!!” They’re terrified that if minorities ever tuned out that groundless lie and asked themselves which party’s policies are actually better for them, their families and their communities, the minority vote for Democrats would collapse like Joe Biden after 2 pm. And we’re happy to report that that scam is finally starting to collapse, as minorities see how much better Republican economic and crime policies are for their pocketbooks and the safety of their families.
We’ve also finally hearing from teachers who are horrified at the socialist indoctrination, racist “Critical Race Theory,” and graphic and inappropriate LGBTQ sexual propaganda that their leftist teachers’ union bosses expect them to teach. They were just terrified to speak up about it. One Connecticut assistant principal spilled the beans by revealing how his district illegally refuses to hire any teachers who are religious, Catholic, conservative or over 30 because they figure they’re more likely to resist brainwashing their students with leftism. Is that how teachers’ unions “give the workers a voice,” by letting them be bullied until they’re afraid to speak their minds or live their religious faith for fear of losing their jobs?
Maybe some union bosses thought it was worth it if the Democrats could shove through their PRO Act bill that would have essentially unionized the entire economy. Boosters claimed polls showed Americans strongly supported it, but that was because it was sold as a piñata of goodies that would empower workers and protect their rights, while they weren’t told that it was actually full of poison pills that would kill independent contractor jobs that many Americans want and force Americans to hand over billions of dollars in dues to unions they didn’t want to join, along with much of their freedom to choose how and when they would work. It would have repealed state right-to-work laws and destroyed the modern freelance/gig/contract worker economy that many workers prefer. It passed the then-Democrat House in 2021, but fortunately, the GOP House takeover stalled it, and it appears dead…for now, at least.
It’s no wonder that when given the choice, many workers stop paying union dues because they believe their union bosses aren’t doing enough to deserve them and are often actively working against their best interests and personal beliefs.
We have nothing against unions in general, and they did a lot of good in the early 20th century to give workers a voice, to protect their safety and to assure fair wages and reasonable working conditions. In some ways, they still help workers in certain industries. But like most things that become entangled in Democrat politics, their leaders forgot their original mission and became corrupt, self-serving and drunk on power. Like much of our federal Deep State, they’re so embedded into our system that they became concerned chiefly with protecting and expanding their own power even at the expense of the people they claim to be serving.
But in a positive sign that might have represented a turning point, Teamsters leader Sean O’Brien spoke at the 2024 GOP Convention. And the Teamsters have actually started backing some Republican candidates. These are positive signs that some union leaders are finally starting to listen to their members instead of the DNC, and realizing that the GOP has become the party of working people while the Democrats now mostly represent academia, radical activists and wealthy elites. It’s time for them to stop betting on the wrong horse.
That’s why on Labor Day, we can reflect with gratitude on the positive role that unions played a century ago, and hope that they can be reformed to restore their proper role in the future. But mostly, we prefer to think of it as a day to celebrate not the unions or their leaders, but the American workers: the people who put in a hard day’s work, sweating through their clothes on farms and in factories…those who don police and firefighter uniforms and rush toward danger when the rest of us are running away from it…and the ones who kept working through the pandemic, from the doctors and nurses to the truckers, delivery drivers and grocery shelf stockers, to keep the rest of us supplied with the necessities of life. The workers, union or not, who literally and figuratively carry the load for those who can’t or won’t.
These are the real heroes of America who deserve a holiday in their honor. So this Labor Day is for you!
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We hear a lot of talk from politicians about values. Some, like Kamala Harris, have multiple values to choose from on every issue (they remind us of Groucho Marx’s line: “These are my principles! If you don’t like them, I have others.”) But do we truly value real work and the people who do it? Labor Day is a good time to think about that question, especially when our elites seem more out of touch and contemptuous of working people than at any time since the French Revolution (“Let them eat insects!”)
Companies should pay employees as generously as they can, because good workers have worth. This is why you should always be skeptical of any politician who claims to “care” about workers, but also wants to raise taxes, both on workers and businesses. When taxes are high, it’s a sign that the government disrespects the workers by believing that what it will do with their salary is better than what the person who earned it will do. And high business taxes mean the government thinks what it will do with that money is better than the business expanding and hiring more workers, or giving them a raise. The latest wrinkle is “Democratic” socialists who want to confiscate all the wealth of billionaires with zero understanding that their wealth isn’t in big money vaults; it’s invested in businesses that would have to be liquidated, eliminating thousands of jobs. That’s what happens when socialism encounters reality.
When we see employees as having worth, we see their work as valuable. That’s the value of work. It’s precisely why we pay others to do it. YOU are valuable and therefore what you DO has value.
A lot of politicians don’t understand that a job is more than just a way to put bread on the table. From man’s beginnings as recorded in the book of Genesis, we were hard-wired for labor. God told us to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. It’s natural for us to want to prove our value by producing.
From the time we are children, we imitate our parents in their work. It’s part of our DNA to want to be grown up, and one sure way to feel grown up is to work. That’s why the loss of a job is far, far more than an economic setback. It’s dehumanizing to want to be productive and not be able. There is pride and dignity in sitting down to a meal that your work provided.
The CDC studied suicide rates since 1928 and found that they mirrored the economy. Suicides took a big uptick during the Great Depression. They plunged during World War II, and spiked again in the recessions of the mid-70’s and early 80’s (Imagine that: unemployment is harder for people to deal with psychologically than world war.) Suicides dropped to their lowest levels ever in the year 2000, when the tech boom dropped unemployment to just 4 percent. But after the dot-com bubble burst, America’s suicide rate began steadily cli…
