It's Labor Day. So, I decided to sit down and write a Labor Day post.
The challenge I have is that I have never, in my life, met anyone who I thought of as labor.
I cleaned out toilets and saw my fellow toilet cleaners as people. I had a job digging holes with a shovel. I saw my fellow posthole diggers as people. I had a job mowing lawns with a crew of short brown people who spoke Spanish. They were quite clearly people. The closest I ever got to a situation of working with non-humans was in an office setting.
One of my office duties was to send out a mass mailer once a month. The things with arms, legs and bad attitudes in the post office may qualify as some sort of inhuman labor. That thing that takes money for parking tickets at the city courthouse may not be human and just labor.
I have a great admiration for hard work involved in improving this world of ours. I have disdain for those who spend their days working the system. I especially dislike those who work the system at the cost of others.
I find that I really don't get into Labor Day because I don't see people as laborers. Perhaps if it were a day to celebrate the fruit on one's labor I would get into it. Imagine if Labor Day had events around the nation showing off all the products and accomplishments of labor during the year, rather than just political rallies.
What I wish most for the workers of the world is that have the opportunity to work on projects that they enjoy.
I believe the best way to really love one's work is to own one's work.
This brings to the gist of this post. It seems to me that many of the things contrived by politicians and business leaders in the name of the employee have actually worked to the employee's detriment. This list includes employer based health insurance and pensions.
These financial tools have workers placing their retirement savings and health care into the hands of their employer. The employer, of course, leverages these resources to the detriment of employees as a whole.
One of the selling points of employer based health insurance is the hope of employers that they could get by with paying out less than they would if they were giving money directly to employees for health care as each employee would want to have a buffer greater than expect health expenses in the Health Savings Account.
Were employees to own their own health care resources, they would feel less of a dependency on their employer (or on their politicians). My hope for Labor Day is that our nation finds a way to dodge the bullet of the Federal health care power grab and that the number of workers with health savings accounts triples in the up coming year.
1 comment:
Labor Day is a celebration of the labor movement, which is essentially based on an entitlement mentality. It does not celebrate the individual, except as part of a collective. For this reason, I celebrate the day in my own way.
Strangely, there is a broad coalition that supports the continuance of the bondage of the employer provided health insurance system. The motivations of the politicians, insurance companies, and employers is clear enough.
But also many of those that abhor the thought of government provided health coverage cling to employer provided coverage, beguiled by a false sense of security and apparently unappreciative of the level of subservience to which they are subjected.
Most people cannot even fathom the concept of true freedom in health care. They have become so used to the system of bondage that the very thought of such liberty is simply too horrible to entertain.
Perhaps they believe the dark fairy tales spun by those that control pricing information (i.e. power) in the current system.
Post a Comment