Most Americans think of Labor Day as part of a long weekend and the unofficial end of summer. It was originally meant, though, to recognize the contributions of labor unions. I recommend a third alternative: use Labor Day to honor laborers.
To honor laborers, you would have to respect their right to make choices for themselves. But because so many people, especially people in government, don’t respect that right, laborers face two main obstacles: (1) government regulation that gives labor unions monopoly power over their labor, and (2) other government regulations that restrict the kinds of deals that laborers can make with those who buy their services. Honoring labor would mean getting rid of those two obstacles.
These are the opening two paragraphs of my 2016 Labor Day article, “Honor Laborers,” Econlib, September 5, 2016.
I recommend the whole thing. I think it still stands up well.
With one exception: government barriers to labor mobility. I read Ilya Somin’s article at Reason today, “Help Workers by Breaking Down Barriers to Labor Mobility,” Reason, September 2, 2024. In my piece, I totally missed the importance of getting rid of, or at least drastically reducing, government barriers to labor mobility.
There are two main barriers. The first are barriers to laborers moving to new jobs within the United States, both in the form of licensing restrictions and in the form of zoning restrictions that make the cost of housing prohibitive. The second are barriers to laborers wanting to come here from other countries. Ilya handles the issues well and I recommend his article.
Well, I agree with almost all of the sentiments.
And I fully agree with the idea of greater labor mobility.
If one believes in the rule of law, one should decry the support of illegal immigration - rampant on the left today, and where you have indicated you believe that the overt policies of border czar Kamala and the left are better than the overt policies of DJT on the right - because it is quite literally (old school use of the term) crowding out the ability to have a sane increase in the amount of legal immigration to this country.
On the desirability of a far greater amount of legal immigration, I agree strongly with your and Somin’s thrust.
However when you stretch it from that to fully open borders, as opposed to merely “much greater labor mobility”, then you switch to advocating for policies which are at the expense of all taxpayers - given our extremely generous welfare state - and all citizens, given the risk to our culture and future that unlimited migration from fully open borders would bring. As well as changing the equation to where at minimum it is unobvious whether unlimited migration would in fact be in the interests of the poor and working class citizens of the U.S. (I submit it almost surely would not.)
Somin seems to skirt the issue of whether he is advocating for fully open borders or not. But in this particular case, it is a distinction with an *enormous* difference.
David--well done! This may not be totally relevant, but your approach got me thinking about labor union endorsements during presidential elections and how the leadership votes one way and its rank and file another. People forget that labor leaders often, in my opinion, vote their own personal needs and views first. The lone example, in this election cycle, of a leader who did not is Teamsters President Sean O'Brien who reached out to both Republicans and Democrats asking to speak at their conventions because his members are about evenly split between the two parties. The Republicans invited him immediately and he gave a rousing, unedited speech where he called Trump one tough SOB. The Democrats never even bothered to answer his request, which he said really upset his members. This should say a lot to anybody yet undecided about which way to vote.