Happy Labor Day!

I hope everyone is having a good labor day and I hope everyone knows that labor day isn't just a way to get a day off before we all jump back into our fall schedules -- school, work, the upcoming holidays etc. It's a day to celebrate the greatness of this country and all the people that have worked hard to make this the greatest and most free nation the world has ever seen. The fact that tens of millions of Americans work hard, in their own self-interest in a capitalist society makes everything we enjoy in this country today possible. 

Unions, of course, like to claim Labor Day as their own and they have a different spin on it. I subscribe to the AFL-CIO email updates and thought there had to be an email from the AFL-CIO about Labor Day. Richard Trumka didn't disappoint. Here's part of his Labor Day message. it's actually pretty reasonable for Trumka:

Before you hit your Labor Day parade or cookout, I wanted to recognize the work you do every day to make this country great—and take the chance to say "thank you."

It’s America’s workers who built this country, make it run and keep it going.

First of all, I'm management so I don't think Trumka really wants to recognize the work I do. Because if you listen to Trumka, management are a bunch of evil bastards who sit around and figure out how to make life miserable for "workers". The only kind of management Trumka approves of is union management.  But that aside, I agree that American workers are the best in the world and they do indeed keep this country running. But American workers work mainly because some entrepreneur, whether it was Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, or Bill Gates or Ray Kroc or the guy who owns the little janitorial business or pharmacy in your town, put everything they had on the line for their dream. Most of them didn't know whether or not they would make it -- in fact many don't and most have tough times before their businesses finally take off. But every business, large and small, began as someone's dream. And those dreams spawned opportunities for others.

I know that I owe everything I have today, as does every other employee in this country, to someone who had a vision and made that vision work for them and for the people they ended up employing. They gave those people a chance to develop, grow, prove their worth and contribute to the vision. When Bill Gates started tinkering in his parent's garage, he probably never imagined that his dream would eventually grow into a huge corporation that employed hundreds of thousands of people. He was just pursuing his dream. And his dream gave tens of thousands of other people the opportunity to pursue their dream, whatever that dream might be.  

While we honor American "workers" today, let's not forget those hard-working entrepreneurs who put everything they had on the line and gave America's "workers" the opportunity to work and by doing so pursue their dreams.