Happy Labor Day and the irony of it

 

Well to those of you who are blessed with the day off I hope you are enjoying it.

Unfortunately due to the fact that the majority of our country works in the service industry they are working, yet some how or another Wall Street and executives have the day off.

So what gives? A bit of corporate greed, a bit of lack of family values, a bit of hypocrisy and so on.

I love to hear conservatives say they are for family values, yet all their policies go against it. It isn’t just Labor day, it is in general. People should be off to be with their families.

We struggle nowadays to be with our families and it isn’t just the so called political divide. This problem has been developing for decades. And it is worsened with so many people working in the service industry.

It wouldn’t hurt the world for people to be off, yes even people who work in convenience stores, grocery stores, gas stations etc. People can plan a day ahead for basic necessities or wants.

We need to get back together as families and spend time with each other and society needs to support this concept. Instead it is discouraged. People are required to work 60 hours or more a week. And before you worked 60 hours a week to “get ahead” or earn extra money for that family vacation. Now it is 60 hours a week to survive.

We all wonder what is going wrong with our country, yet the answers are staring us in the face, but we don’t want to go towards it. People are dragged away from their family early or they come from a dysfunctional family and do not know what it takes to have even basic family interaction. And this dysfunctional family is partly because as a society we do not encourage being with your family.

People always talk about “back in the day” and yes there were family problems back then, but people tried or some would. There was an understanding of the value of the family, not just for economic survival but for community and support.

I always say we shouldn’t legislate morality, yet we can create policies that support our families. And supporting family and main street over Wall Street would not be anti conservative policy. Wall Street shouldn’t be the primary driver of public policy. Our values should be and even without legislating morality. 

It would not hurt us to shut down all non-essential businesses for holidays. We did it during the pandemic, so why not a few times a year for the holidays already in place such as Labor Day, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter or even add a couple more if needed, but the vast populace should have the day off and then as a society we go back to encouraging people to be with their family and friends during this time. This is family value policy as much as anything else.

And even if we started doing this, it is going to take some time for people to regroup with their family since we have spent so much time splitting it up.

So this means talking to our young people about what is important. Let them know, computers, games, streaming are here, but so are your parents, your grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles etc. They may not always be here. And what happens when you grow old, who are you spending time with? Yourself? Maybe they may not want a family now, but do they want to completely ignore old age. We spend time encouraging people to save for retirement, but what about the time going to be spent in retirement. Who will you wake up next to, who will call you to talk, who will you meet at a restaurant for lunch?  These are valid questions to ask yourself even while you are young.

People do not want to hear this, but the Catholic Church was open today and had Mass. What other churches are open today so you can come and celebrate with your family? We need them to be open and people come together to celebrate even the small joys in life and to thank for what we have. Yet this is discouraged.

Again, there is so much talk about family values from Republicans, yet they spend more time propping up Wall Street and the one percent instead of focusing on what is truly important for this country. A company’s profits are nice, but they do not need to post record profits every quarter. Supporting the business climate above all isn’t conservative policy, that is just greed.

Our country is great because of the work people put into it and today we should let the worker be celebrated, not too much to ask if you really care about your workers, even the service industry workers.

Happy Labor Day,……. Sort of