In all my working years, I always knew that every employer I ever worked for was making far more money from my labor than they ever paid me, but I was OK with the trade-off of my time and physical labor because I was getting something I wanted — pay and benefits.
Once, while working at a paper converting company, I wanted a raise. Rather than say, “Pay me more because I’ve been here two years,” I wanted to show my employer why I should get more. First, I wrote down all the skills I had acquired since working there to demonstrate the value of my continued employment. Then I asked for a $1.50-per-hour pay raise; my employer gave me $2. I worked there for several years after. Had the employer said “no,” I would have taken my work ethic and skills elsewhere; I didn’t need the government to force the employer to pay me more.
I once watched the 1936 movie “Things to Come,” based on H.G Wells’ novel. In it, war breaks out over England, devastating everything, as war does. The movie skips to the future, where underground cities are built with many innovations, including the creation of a space gun to launch a manned capsule into orbit around the Moon. In the movie, characters resisted the order and progress, including one protestor who formed a mob seeking to vandalize and destroy (sound famili ...
