labor day | The Direction of Intention

The Reason [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 7, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“[Teddy]Roosevelt had come to believe that a strong government must regulate business. “The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” he said.

After all, he said, “[t]he object of government is the welfare of the people.” ~ Milwaukee Independent

It reads like copy from today yet it’s from a speech Roosevelt gave in 1912. The times have changed but the tension remains the same. The question is as it was then: is the object of government the welfare of the people – all of the people – or is it to protect the prosperity of the few?

Theodore Roosevelt believed that the purpose of government was to prosper the people. In today’s parlance that would make him a Democratic Socialist. Government must be strong in order to regulate corporations. Government is the firewall that protects the people from corporate greed and exploitation.

The current occupant of the White House and the contemporary republican party believe the opposite: The purpose of government is deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy few. It’s an agenda that serves a long debunked claim that wealth will trickle down. It doesn’t. It never has. It never will. It creates “…a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”

The purpose of DOGE was not to cut waste, fraud and abuse. The purpose of DOGE was to cut oversight and regulation of corporate activity. We are feeling the effects of a weakened government oversight in the grocery store, at the gas pump, in the gutting of healthcare and the social safety net.

“Over the past five decades, economic analyses indicate that roughly $50 trillion to $80 trillion in aggregate income and wealth has been redistributed upward or concentrated into the highest-earning brackets away from the bottom 90% of Americans.”

The cuts to healthcare, to Medicaid, to SNAP…to every program that served the welfare of the people pays for an enormous tax cut extended to the already morbidly wealthy. It is the centerpiece of the republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill. It balloons our national debt. Much of the damage is yet to be felt since they courageously (I’m being facetious) planned for the majority of the cuts to take effect AFTER the midterms.

Today is Labor Day. It has a history and a purpose: “Workers formed unions and held rallies. On September 5, 1882, the first Labor Day parade was held in New York City when 10,000 workers marched for better pay and conditions.”

Although the cost of living has escalated, the last raise to the minimum wage was in 2009.

The republicans under the current occupant of the White House have convinced many people at the bottom of the economic ladder that government is the problem. It’s not corporate greed. It’s not corporate influence in Washington D.C., it’s not that business driven policy and purchased-politicians that weaken the role of government… The MAGA cult famously votes – and continues to vote – for its own exploitation. They cheer the wreckage of the firewall built to protect them.

It’s Labor Day. It’s time for us to remember the reason why we gather this day and place our focus and intention on the workers. It’s time for us to remember that “the object of government is the welfare of the people.”

It is time for the people to reclaim their government from the small class of enormously wealthy people who exploit the people at every turn. And, more to the point, it is time for this nation to exit the question: is the object of government the welfare of the people – all of the people – or is it to protect the prosperity of the few? This nation has always prospered when the welfare of the people are the object of policy. It teeters when our government is hijacked and used to protect the wealth of the few.

We are a government of, by, and for the people. A government for the people. It’s in our founding documents. It is the reason why we vote, why we have the right to vote. It is the reason the republicans and this president are assaulting our right to vote from every direction.

It’s Labor Day. It’s time to remember that working people had to fight for their rights. They are not a given. They are tenuous. It’s time for us to realize how hard this administration is working to strip us of our rights, to gut the government whose purpose is to protect the welfare of the people while it is working overtime to protect “a small class of enormously wealthy people, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”

What will you do now and in November to protect your rights, especially your right to vote in free and fair election, given that this might be our last Labor Day celebrated by people governed by a system rooted in the belief that the people should choose their leaders – and not the other way around?

read Kerri’s blog post about LABOR DAY

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Come Together [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 7, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

My theme of life-as-a-circle is still with me. Today, this Labor Day, 2020, bubbles with portent. Unlike any Labor Day in my lifetime, this day seems to dip its toe into the cold origins of this national holiday celebrating laborers but also serves as an omen. An augury.

This holiday, so benign as we now practice it, was borne of fire and conflict. It seems our nation is only capable of learning through the violence that it inflicts upon itself. Waves of riots, years of bloodshed as laborers as young as 5, worked 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and barely eked out a living. The income gap in 2020 mirrors that of the 1890’s, America’s Gilded Age. As historian Nell Irvin Painter explains, “‘Gilded’ is not golden. ‘Gilded’ has the sense of a patina covering something else. It’s the shiny exterior and the rot underneath.” The violence in the streets, the frustration and anger, riots and protests by the common working people forced the government to act. Among other things, Labor Day came into existence. A day off.

“We’re in these cycles in which we learn and forget and learn and forget,” Painter says.

We are in the ‘forgetting’ part of the cycle. It’s Keynsian economics: a capitalist economy can only thrive with the existence of a healthy middle class. Consumption requires capable-and-able consumers. Investment crumbles when consumption stalls. We’ve been here before. We don’t need a crystal ball to see where our unsupported gig economy is taking us. On this Labor Day it is fair game to ask, “What exactly are we celebrating?”

We cycle into remembering when we need to pull together. When we start considering the interests of the whole over the few. When, as the sign says, we remember to take care of one another. During this Labor Day there is a true tell of our capacity to consider one another: a pandemic rages. The estimates top 400,000 deaths by the new year. The only force that can reduce that number is our capacity to consider one another.

Life in the forgetting sweep of the cycle: the streets are alive with riot and protest. People by the millions are losing their homes and their jobs. Desperation and division reign; panicked people rarely think straight.

Life in the remembering sweep of the cycle: people pull their energy and resources together remembering that no one can thrive in a vacuum. A united workforce is capable of reminding “the system” that it was meant to serve them and support them in a shared prosperity. Not to use their labor to benefit the few. Coming together for the betterment of all: it is the original impulse and meaning of Labor Day.

read Kerri’s blog post about LABOR DAY