So today is Labor Day. For me, since I'm retired, it is just another day. But I will celebrate it. I'm making a typical St. Louis Labor Day dinner: barbequed pork steaks, potato salad, and baked beans. Yummie!
I will also think of all the workers who have made this country great. Not the politicians, but the common laborers, who actually work for a living. Not the union leaders, but the rank and file workers.
I will think of the workers who built our interstate highway system, or the workers who built some of our marvels like Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. I will think of the workers who built some of our fabulous skyscrapers that we see in every large city.
I will think of the workers who mobilized during WWII to build the planes, ships, tanks, bombs, and other military hardware that we used to win the war. Our women went to work in the factories because so may of our men went off to war.
I will think of my co-workers at IBM, especially the Host Team who still has to work for the CDSM©, as well as all the other technical workers in this country. Some of them have to work today as many computer centers are up 24 hours a day seven days a week. When I was a customer engineer for IBM in St. Louis my account was McDonnell-Douglas Automation and I had to work many holidays.
So to all American workers, a thank you for making this country the economic powerhouse it is, with the largest economy in the world. I salute you guys. For those of you who are off today, enjoy your holiday. You earned it!
Posted by denny at September 4, 2006 01:40 PM
Sounds good, Denny. I do miss the barbeques back home. Mmmm...pork steaks.
Don't forget to Maull it!
Posted by: Mike on September 4, 2006 05:51 PMThank You
Posted by: Ron on September 5, 2006 05:56 AMNon-american-citizen-question : I didn't know this day of vacation. Does it mean you have no vacation on May, 1st ? Or Labor-day has nothing to do with it ?
Posted by: Prosper on September 5, 2006 08:10 AMProsper - May 1st is a commie holiday. We do not celebrate it. The first Monday in September is a holiday we call Labor Day. It is to salute the American worker. It was first observed in 1882. Here is a short history. Also, we consider it the end of summer. Schools used to open right after Labor Day, but now they open earlier.
Posted by: Denny on September 5, 2006 01:04 PMHere's a sad fact about the American laborer: most states have seen a net drop in median income over the past six years. The worst performers are Michigan (-12%), North Carolina (-11.3%), Utah (-10.5%), Oregon (-10.4%), and Mississippi (-10.3%). Well over half saw a greater than 5% decline, and only five states showed an increase.
Quick, let's blame Bush!
Posted by: Squidley on September 5, 2006 04:23 PMSquidley, I'm not sure as it's been many years since I had my statistics course back in vet school, but isn't the "mean" income more important than the median. In other words, if you had a whole bunch of high school kids entering the work force at lower paying, entry level jobs, I think that will skew the median more significantly than the mean. Is that correct? And I'm sorry I didn't dig deeper into that link, but were those numbers corrected for inflation. It's kind of like gas prices, their something like 4X higher than gasoline was in the 80's, but corrected for inflation, it hasn't changed much. Anyway, I'm not much of an economist but my impression was the chart was made to show a negative aspect of the current work force, but it seems like all the parameters used to measure the economy and associated work force suggests that things are going quite well.
Posted by: Ray on September 5, 2006 06:41 PMActually, what you get with those figures is only part of the picture. You also have to take into account that while corporate profits increased during this period, the share of GDP going to wages is at a record low.
At first, this seems contradictory: productivity is up, but wages are down? Normally, an increase in productivity is accompanied by increased pay. However, an excellent way to achieve what we see now is to have millions of illegal workers willing to be paid far lower wages than what would otherwise be the going rate.
Here's another fun fact to know and share: "Hispanic"* households experienced declines in median income between 2002 and 2003, and again between 2003 and 2004.
Is it a coincidence that the vast majority of illegal aliens are "Hispanic"*? In fact, almost 3/4 of them come from the third-world nation south of our porous border.
Recent economic trends have been exacerbated by free trade with China and the high-tech bubble.
While free trade with China is a Clinton affair, both Slick Willie and W have done nothing about the open border with Mexico, and Bush is actively pushing for the Hispanicization of America, which, if successful, would turn us into a Latin American country, replete with corruption and the death of the rule of law.
*"Hispanic": the only "ethnic" group kinda sorta defined by language. Uh, right. Language is well-known as a strictly ethnic category. Lessee here, Cameron Diaz (white/blonde/blue) and Alfonso Ribeiro (black/black/brown) are both "Hispanic" and therefore of the same ethnicity. Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
Posted by: Squidley on September 6, 2006 03:04 AM