www.markholder.org

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun. - Eugene Debs, borrowed from the infinitely informative  The Chequer-Board Of Nights And Days  blog. Happy Labor Day, ye laborers. 

Let's be clear on one thing: this is not the world your parents meant for you to inherit. The world they had in mind was a much safer, more stable world. Sure, there were surprises no one saw coming, but this is true in day-to-day life just as it is in the bigger picture. The end of the Cold War caught us all by surprise, as did 9/11, to name two examples. The wholesale outsourcing of jobs to cheap labor markets was not something your parents anticipated, although the precedent had been set decades before. One would do well to remember that American industrial jobs moved to the South to escape unionized labor and seek favorable tax policies; that those jobs have continued to move in search of greater profits, lower wages and regulations can be seen as the logical conclusion of policy. Besides, in your parents time, if you left one job, you could always find another. Times have changed, indeed. Your parents couldn't foresee a time when savers would be punished for s...