Labor Day is a celebration of American work. It sometimes seems like an anachronism, a holdover from a day long gone when people worked in factories and churned out widgets with mechanical precision.  That image often comes to people in dirty sepia tones like a faded old photograph of grandpa at his bench.  Yet those days were more than grime and hard work, they were times when the US was at the height of its power around the world.  No matter how you want to look at what we celebrate on Labor Day, scorn or longing, hard work went strong arm and arm with the power of this nation.

The accelerated decline of manufacturing in the last decade shows how our current unemployment problem has a lot to do with the simple fact that we stopped making stuff.  It’s not a big leap to see that our power and prestige has gone away with those jobs.

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The clock goes off at a pre-set time, maybe launching a radio station that fills the air with familiar patter and music that you’ve come to rely on. You wander to the bathroom where the tap has hot water waiting and you can start your day on a schedule.  If you timed it right there’s time for a cup of coffee from Colombia, maybe a banana from Costa Rica or a swallow of orange juice from Brazil.  You might have some processed food taken from a box and reheated in a Chinese made appliance.

These are the systems you’ve come to rely on – as much as the systems have come to rely on you to be part of them.

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