Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Orange Vest of Responsibility

School starting back up this year hit me with one of those Gen X flashbacks that you don’t see coming.

It wasn’t the smell of freshly sharpened pencils. It wasn’t the sound of the school bus. It wasn’t even the sight of kids walking around with backpacks that cost more than my first car.

It was the crossing guards.

There they were, standing at elementary schools, junior highs, even high schools, making sure children safely crossed the street.

And I thought, Wait a minute… when the hell did we decide kids needed adults to do this?

Because when I was in elementary school in the 1970s, you didn’t necessarily need an adult to make sure you crossed the street. You needed a fifth or sixth grader.

That’s right.

Fifth graders.

We were apparently considered mature enough to be entrusted with the lives of smaller children while simultaneously being considered immature enough that we probably shouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors.

Somewhere around fifth grade, you could get handed an orange crossing-guard vest and suddenly you had a job.

No badge.

No certification.

No reflective stop sign on a giant stick.

Hell, half the time you didn’t even have a stop sign.

You just stood there, stuck your hand out into traffic and apparently that was enough.

“STOP!”

And remarkably, people stopped.

There you were, eleven years old, holding your hand up to a two-ton automobile like some miniature traffic cop with absolutely no authority whatsoever.

And nobody questioned it.

Your parents didn’t demand to know the qualifications of the crossing guard.

There wasn’t a committee meeting.

There wasn’t a background check.

There wasn’t a laminated handbook explaining your responsibilities.

There was just:

“You’re a fifth grader now. Here’s an orange vest. Make sure those first graders don’t get run over.”

And apparently, we did.

But crossing children wasn’t even the weirdest part.

We were given responsibility for ourselves.

We walked to school.

We walked home.

We went outside.

We disappeared for hours.

We rode bikes without helmets.

We drank water from garden hoses.

We were expected to know where we were supposed to be and when we were supposed to be home.

And somewhere along the way, we apparently decided that childhood needed to become a fully supervised corporate internship.

Today, we have adults standing outside schools making sure teenagers cross the street safely.

Teenagers.

These are people who are old enough to drive a car, hold a job, enlist in the military, and, depending on the state, vote.

But apparently crossing 25 feet of asphalt requires adult supervision.

I’m not saying children shouldn’t be protected. Obviously they should.

And I’m not saying there aren’t legitimate reasons for having professional crossing guards. Traffic is different. Roads are busier. Cars are bigger. Distracted driving is a real thing.

But there’s something else we’ve lost along the way.

Responsibility.

We used to give children responsibility as a way of teaching them how to become adults.

You weren’t expected to magically become responsible at eighteen.

You practiced.

You were given something to do.

You were trusted with something.

You learned that somebody smaller than you was counting on you.

You learned that if you screwed up, there were consequences.

And maybe that’s the part that sticks with me.

We didn’t have a lot of supervision, but we had expectations.

You didn’t need somebody standing over you every second because somebody had already told you what was expected.

You took care of the little kids.

You watched your siblings.

You walked home.

You had chores.

You figured things out.

And if you came home with a scraped knee, your parents probably didn’t call a lawyer.

They got you a Band-Aid.

Maybe some hydrogen peroxide that felt like Satan himself had been poured into the wound.

Then they told you to quit whining.

We were given freedom before we were given adulthood.

And perhaps that’s the difference.

Today’s kids are often protected from every possible risk, while we were often expected to learn how to navigate those risks ourselves.

Neither extreme is necessarily perfect.

But sometimes I wonder if, in our effort to keep children safe, we’ve forgotten that learning responsibility requires actually being responsible for something.

Because when I look at those crossing guards today, I can’t help but think about that orange vest.

Some fifth grader in the 1970s would put it on, walk out to the curb, hold up his hand and think:

“Well, I guess I’m in charge now.”

And somehow, for an entire generation, that was pretty much how adulthood began.

Not with a ceremony.

Not with an app.

Not with a permission slip.

Just somebody handing you an orange vest and saying:

“Don’t let those kids get hit by a car.”

And you didn’t.

Because you were a kid.

But for that ten minutes every morning, somebody trusted you to be an adult.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Nine Justices, Thirteen Circuits, and One Hell of a Bottleneck

Well, here we are again.

Chief Justice John Roberts basically looked at the White House ballroom case and said, in the judicial equivalent of “Yeah, this probably isn’t legal, but apparently this is what we’re doing,” and then watched the Supreme Court’s majority allow construction to continue anyway.

To be fair, the Court didn’t actually declare the ballroom legal. The majority’s ruling was about whether the preservation group challenging the project had sufficient standing to bring the case. Roberts, joined by the Court’s three liberal justices, dissented and wrote that the construction was “likely unlawful,” pointing specifically to Congress’s authority over federal property. (Justia Law⁠)

And that distinction matters.

But here’s the problem: when the Supreme Court says something is probably unlawful and then the practical result is, “Well, go ahead and keep building it,” ordinary Americans are understandably left wondering what the hell the word “law” is supposed to accomplish.

This is precisely why I keep coming back to something we’ve discussed a hundred times:

Nine justices are not enough.

We have thirteen federal judicial circuits and nine Supreme Court justices. That means the highest court in the land is operating with fewer members than there are appellate circuits whose decisions it is ultimately supposed to review.

That made a certain amount of sense when the country was considerably smaller, the legal system was considerably smaller, and we weren’t trying to govern a nation of more than 300 million people with institutions designed for a vastly different America.

Congress has the constitutional authority to structure the Supreme Court, and the Constitution itself doesn’t specify that the Court must have nine justices. Congress has changed the Court’s size repeatedly throughout American history. (Congress.gov⁠)

So maybe it’s time to stop treating nine like it was handed down from Mount Sinai on stone tablets.

Make it thirteen.

One justice for each federal circuit.

That doesn’t magically solve every problem. It doesn’t make justices more objective. It doesn’t eliminate ideological disagreements. And it certainly doesn’t guarantee that the Court will suddenly start making decisions everybody likes.

But it could reduce the absurdity of having an institution with enormous power concentrated in nine people whose appointments can shape American law for generations.

And while we’re fixing things, let’s talk about the other elephant sitting in the courtroom:

Lifetime appointments.

I’m not talking about removing judges because we don’t like their decisions. That’s exactly the kind of political nonsense judicial independence is supposed to protect us from.

I’m talking about a reasonable term of service on the Supreme Court.

Eighteen years.

That isn’t some crazy number pulled out of a hat. Eighteen-year Supreme Court terms have been proposed in Congress, with a system designed to stagger appointments so that presidents would ordinarily make two appointments during a four-year term. Under such proposals, justices could continue serving in the federal judiciary after their Supreme Court service ended. (Congress.gov⁠)

In other words, you’re not firing the judge. You’re changing the job assignment.

Serve eighteen years on the Supreme Court. Then go back to the federal appellate bench or another appropriate judicial role.

You still have judicial independence.

You still have experienced judges.

You still have people who have spent decades learning constitutional law.

What you don’t have is a system where one presidential election can effectively determine the ideological composition of the Supreme Court for the next thirty or forty years.

Because that’s where the system gets ridiculous.

We have turned Supreme Court appointments into political nuclear warfare because everybody knows that one vacancy can determine the direction of constitutional law for a generation.

And then we act surprised when politicians behave like the fate of Western civilization depends on getting their person into that chair.

Remember Merrick Garland?

In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, arguing that voters should have a voice in selecting the next justice. Garland’s nomination sat there for 237 days without a hearing. Four years later, McConnell’s Senate moved forward with Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination just 46 days before the presidential election. (Senate Judiciary Committee⁠)

That’s not a system.

That’s a game of political chicken played with lifetime judicial appointments.

And here’s the funny part: everybody pretends they’re defending some sacred constitutional principle when what they’re really defending is who gets to pick the next lifetime player on the Supreme Court.

If we had eighteen-year terms with regular, staggered appointments, the stakes would change dramatically.

You wouldn’t have a 39-year-old justice potentially sitting until they’re 89.

You wouldn’t have presidents gambling on vacancies.

You wouldn’t have senators deciding that the Constitution means one thing when their party occupies the White House and something entirely different when the other party does.

And perhaps most importantly, we wouldn’t be asking nine human beings to carry the constitutional weight of an entire nation indefinitely.

The Supreme Court is supposed to be one branch of government, not the final resting place of American political consequences.

And maybe that’s the bigger lesson from this ridiculous ballroom episode.

The problem isn’t just the ballroom.

The problem is a political system that has increasingly turned every institutional decision into a battle over who has enough power to get around whom.

Congress says one thing.

The president says another.

The courts get dragged into it.

The Supreme Court says, essentially, “We aren’t necessarily deciding whether this is legal, but we’re not stopping it right now.”

And everybody walks away pretending that’s somehow a satisfying resolution.

It isn’t.

We shouldn’t want a Supreme Court that belongs to Republicans.

We shouldn’t want a Supreme Court that belongs to Democrats.

We should want a Supreme Court that belongs to the Constitution and the American people.

And if that requires expanding the Court to thirteen justices, establishing regular eighteen-year terms, staggering appointments, and allowing experienced justices to continue serving elsewhere in the federal judiciary, then maybe it’s time to stop pretending that institutional reform is some radical assault on democracy.

Maybe the radical idea is continuing to operate a twenty-first-century democracy with an eighteenth-century political architecture and then acting shocked when the damn thing creaks.

Because nine people shouldn’t be able to become the constitutional equivalent of a permanent homeowners’ association for America.

And neither should one president.

And neither should one Senate leader.

And neither should one political party.

The voters should get a meaningful say in the direction of the country through elections.

The president should nominate.

The Senate should advise and consent.

The courts should interpret the law.

Congress should make the laws and exercise its constitutional authority.

And nobody should get to rewrite the rules halfway through the game because suddenly the political math isn’t working in their favor.

If we’re going to have a government of the people, then perhaps we should stop designing it around the people who happen to hold power today.

Because today eventually becomes yesterday.

And that’s when the people who changed the rules discover the oldest rule in politics:

Eventually, somebody else gets to use the rules you created.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Self-Made Man Was Never Self-Made

And here’s the other part of this generational shift that I find particularly interesting: Millennials and Gen Z don’t seem nearly as willing to swallow the mythology of the self-made billionaire.

And frankly, I think that’s a good thing.

Because we have spent decades being sold this fairy tale that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates simply woke up one morning, believed in themselves, worked harder than everybody else and magically became billionaires.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who somehow became the patron saint of the self-made man despite being born into considerable wealth and receiving substantial help from his family.

But apparently the official American biography of a billionaire is:

“I believed in myself.”

Roll credits.

The problem is that believing in yourself doesn’t explain the private school, the inherited money, the family connections, the investors, the employees, the government infrastructure, the public education system, the courts, the roads, the internet, the universities, the scientists, the engineers, the customers, the workers or the millions of other people whose labor and participation made that success possible.

That’s not to say these people didn’t work hard.

They did.

That’s not to say they weren’t intelligent, ambitious or extraordinarily driven.

Some of them clearly were.

But working hard and doing it alone are two completely different things.

And I think that’s the veil Millennials and Gen Z are beginning to pull back.

They’re looking at the billionaire class and asking a very uncomfortable question:

“Self-made compared to what?”

Because if you’re handed a significant head start and then win the race, you can certainly say you ran the race.

But don’t stand at the finish line pretending you built the track, manufactured your shoes, invented gravity and personally carried everyone else across the finish line.

That’s mythology.

And mythology matters because it becomes policy.

If we convince ourselves that every billionaire is simply the result of extraordinary individual effort, then the logical conclusion becomes that everyone who isn’t wealthy simply didn’t try hard enough.

And that’s where the whole thing falls apart.

Because millions of people work their asses off every single day and will never accumulate even a microscopic fraction of the wealth possessed by these people.

The difference isn’t necessarily work ethic.

Sometimes it’s opportunity.

Sometimes it’s timing.

Sometimes it’s education.

Sometimes it’s family.

Sometimes it’s connections.

Sometimes it’s luck.

Sometimes it’s being born into exactly the right circumstances.

And almost always, it’s some combination of those things.

That’s what makes the younger generation’s growing emphasis on community so interesting.

They’re beginning to understand something that the rugged-individualism crowd desperately doesn’t want them to understand:

Nobody gets anywhere entirely by themselves.

Not the billionaire.

Not the politician.

Not the CEO.

Not the astronaut.

Not the soldier.

Not the artist.

Not even Rocky fucking Balboa.

Rocky had Mickey.

He had Apollo.

He had Adrian.

He had Paulie.

Apparently even Rocky needed a support system.

Yet somehow we built an entire political and economic mythology around the idea that needing other people means you’re weak.

And Millennials and Gen Z seem to be looking at that mythology and saying:

“Yeah… we’re not buying it anymore.”

They’re seeing the machinery behind the curtain.

They’re recognizing that society isn’t a collection of rugged individuals who occasionally bump into each other at Walmart.

It’s a web.

Your success affects me.

My success affects you.

The teacher educating your kid is part of your life.

The person stocking the grocery store is part of your life.

The truck driver bringing your food across the country is part of your life.

The nurse taking care of you when you’re sick is part of your life.

The engineer maintaining the infrastructure you depend upon is part of your life.

The person picking up your garbage is part of your life.

You don’t have to know their names for their work to be essential to your existence.

That’s community.

And maybe that’s the real generational rebellion happening right now.

It’s not simply, “We don’t want your capitalism.”

It’s more fundamental:

“We don’t believe your mythology.”

They aren’t necessarily impressed by somebody standing on a stage telling them they became wealthy because they were smarter, tougher and more determined than everyone else.

They’re asking what was underneath that success.

Who helped?

Who funded it?

Who built it?

Who worked for it?

Who paid for the infrastructure?

Who created the technology?

Who took the risks?

Who provided the education?

Who got lucky?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who didn’t get those opportunities?

That’s a much more complicated conversation than “work hard and you too can become a billionaire.”

But complicated doesn’t mean wrong.

It means we’re finally talking about reality instead of the bedtime story.

And as a Gen Xer, I have to admit there’s something humbling about watching younger generations question something that some people in my generation accepted as gospel.

We were raised on the idea that the individual was everything.

They seem increasingly interested in the idea that the individual exists within a community.

And maybe that’s the correction we needed.

Because believing you can accomplish something yourself is empowering.

Believing that you accomplished everything yourself is delusional.

There is a difference.

You can be proud of what you built without pretending nobody helped you build it.

You can celebrate ambition without worshipping wealth.

You can admire achievement without turning successful people into superheroes.

And you can believe in personal responsibility while acknowledging that nobody gets to choose the circumstances into which they’re born.

Maybe Millennials and Gen Z aren’t becoming weaker.

Maybe they’re becoming harder to bullshit.

And honestly?

After decades of being told that every billionaire is a rugged individual who personally pulled himself out of the primordial ooze by his bootstraps, I’m perfectly happy to see somebody finally ask:

“Wait a minute… who the hell gave him the boots?”

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There’s something strange about music.

You can hear the same song a hundred times—maybe a thousand—and it can mean absolutely nothing to you on Tuesday. Then, for no particular reason, you hear it again on Wednesday and suddenly it’s like the song has been waiting years to say something to you.

I think that’s because the song doesn’t really change.

We do.

Songs like Cat’s in the Cradle have always hit me a certain way. American Pie can do the same thing. There are songs that seem permanently attached to certain memories, certain people, certain versions of ourselves. You hear the first few notes and you’re not listening to music anymore. You’re standing somewhere you haven’t been in thirty years.

But then there are the random ones.

The songs you’ve heard a million times without really hearing them.

And then, one day, they find you.

Today, it was A Long December by Counting Crows.

I’ve heard that song more times than I could possibly count. I know the melody. I know the words. I know exactly where the song is going before it gets there.

But today, one line landed differently:

“It’s been a long December, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.”

Maybe it’s because I’m 59 now.

Maybe it’s because I’ve accumulated enough Decembers to understand what a long one actually feels like.

Time has a way of becoming more tangible as you get older. When you’re twenty, tomorrow seems almost infinite. Thirty years seems like something that happens to other people. You assume there’s always another year, another opportunity, another version of yourself waiting around the corner.

Then one day you realize that time isn’t something you’re standing beside.

You’re moving through it.

And it doesn’t stop.

That’s the part that gets me.

We talk about tomorrow as though tomorrow is guaranteed. We make plans for next year. We say, I’ll do that someday. We put off phone calls, trips, apologies, dreams, conversations, living.

Because surely there’s always tomorrow.

Except there isn’t.

There is only the assumption of tomorrow.

And somewhere along the way, I’ve found myself repeating that line from A Long December almost like a personal mantra:

Maybe next year will be better than the last.

Except lately, I’m not sure I believe it anymore.

Because I’ve had a lot of Decembers.

And if I’m being completely honest with myself, the years haven’t necessarily gotten better. They’ve mostly gotten different.

Some were harder.

Some were quieter.

Some brought things I never expected.

Some took things I thought would always be there.

And some years didn’t seem to accomplish much of anything at all. They just passed.

That’s perhaps the most unsettling realization of getting older: sometimes you look back and realize you weren’t really moving forward.

You were just moving.

The calendar changed.

The birthdays came.

The seasons passed.

People grew older.

Children became adults.

Rooms became empty.

People you thought would always be part of your life became memories.

And somehow, through all of it, you kept telling yourself:

Maybe next year.

Maybe next year I’ll be happier.

Maybe next year I’ll have more money.

Maybe next year I’ll travel.

Maybe next year I’ll finally get my shit together.

Maybe next year things will make sense.

Maybe next year will be better.

And then next year arrives, and you discover that it’s just another year.

Maybe that’s what A Long December meant to me today that it didn’t mean before.

It’s not really a song about December.

It’s a song about hope in the face of accumulated disappointment.

It’s about looking at everything behind you and still trying to convince yourself that something better might be ahead.

And I think that’s one of the most human things we do.

We keep hoping.

Even when experience tells us otherwise.

We wake up and try again.

We make another plan.

We tell ourselves that the next chapter might be different.

And maybe that’s enough.

Because perhaps life isn’t actually divided into good years and bad years. Maybe it’s divided into moments that matter and moments we didn’t realize mattered until they were gone.

Maybe that’s why music hits differently as we get older.

The song stayed the same.

But I didn’t.

And today, a song I’ve heard a thousand times suddenly reminded me that time isn’t waiting for me to figure everything out.

It’s already moving.

And maybe the goal isn’t to keep waiting for a better year.

Maybe the goal is to make sure that somewhere inside this one, there are a few moments worth remembering.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Happy Labor Day, Now Get Back to Work

Ah, Labor Day.

That magical three-day weekend when America collectively remembers that workers exist.

We barbecue. We buy mattresses. We sit in traffic. We watch football. We complain that summer is over. We take one last trip to the lake before everything becomes pumpkin spice and Christmas decorations in approximately 11 minutes.

And somewhere between the hot dogs and the retail sales, we are reminded that Labor Day is supposed to be about labor.

You know… workers.

The people who actually make the economy happen.

Which makes the modern celebration of Labor Day just a little fucking ironic.

Because some of the loudest people celebrating the holiday are the same people who seem to have developed a profound philosophical objection to the concept of organized labor.

Labor Day wasn’t invented because somebody thought Americans needed an extra Monday to recover from drinking beer on Sunday.

It came out of the labor movement.

In the late 19th century, American workers were putting in brutal hours under dangerous conditions for wages that barely kept families alive. Twelve-hour days weren’t unusual. Six-day workweeks were normal. Child labor was commonplace. Workplace safety was basically a charming suggestion.

And if workers didn’t like it?

Well, there were plenty of other workers waiting outside the factory gate.

That’s the part of American history we tend to polish up a little.

We like to tell ourselves that American prosperity simply appeared because Americans were exceptionally industrious and our entrepreneurs were exceptionally brilliant.

But workers had something to do with it.

They organized.

They went on strike.

They demanded shorter hours, better wages, safer workplaces and the ability to collectively bargain.

And sometimes the response from management and government wasn’t exactly, “Thank you for bringing these concerns to our attention.”

It was police.

Private security forces.

Pinkertons.

National Guard troops.

Arrests.

Violence.

People died fighting for things we now consider completely fucking normal.

The eight-hour workday didn’t descend from heaven on a golden tablet.

Workers fought for it.

The weekend didn’t just happen because somebody in Washington decided Americans deserved more leisure.

Workers fought for it.

Overtime protections, workplace safety regulations, minimum wages, child-labor restrictions, paid leave in many workplaces, the right to collectively bargain—all of these things exist in a historical landscape where workers organized because individual workers had virtually no bargaining power against enormous companies.

And here’s where the modern version of the American workweek gets particularly fucking interesting.

We’ve technically decided that forty hours is enough.

Forty hours.

That’s the line.

Work more than that and, under federal overtime law, you’re generally supposed to receive overtime pay if you’re a covered nonexempt employee.

Sounds pretty reasonable.

Except somewhere along the way, we forgot to make forty hours of work actually sufficient to live a reasonably secure life.

We’ve built an economy where the theoretical full-time workweek and the practical full-time workweek aren’t necessarily the same fucking thing.

Forty hours might be the legal baseline, but for a growing number of working people, it doesn’t cover the baseline of life.

Rent.

Utilities.

Food.

Transportation.

Insurance.

Healthcare.

Childcare.

Student loans.

Credit cards.

The endless parade of shit you need simply to remain alive and functional in modern America.

So what happens?

You work more.

Fifty hours.

Sixty.

Seventy.

You pick up overtime.

You get a second job.

You drive for an app after your regular shift.

You work weekends.

You answer emails after dinner.

You take work home.

You sacrifice sleep.

You sacrifice family time.

You sacrifice the very leisure that the labor movement spent generations fighting to create.

And then we have the audacity to call that freedom.

Because technically, nobody is forcing you to work seventy hours.

You’re choosing to.

Of course, when the alternative is eviction, homelessness, unpaid medical bills or an empty refrigerator, that’s a fascinating definition of choice.

It’s the same kind of freedom as telling somebody they’re free to leave their job while knowing damn well their mortgage payment is due on Friday.

The eight-hour day was supposed to mean something.

Eight hours of work.

Eight hours of rest.

Eight hours for yourself.

That was the idea.

Not eight hours of work followed by two hours commuting, another hour answering messages, three hours of side-hustle work and whatever sleep you can squeeze into the remaining space between obligations.

We didn’t necessarily repeal the eight-hour workday.

We simply made it economically insufficient.

And perhaps that’s one of the greatest ironies of modern Labor Day.

We celebrate the victory of workers who fought to reduce the workweek while simultaneously building an economy where millions of people need to work more than that just to maintain a basic standard of living.

We didn’t abolish the twelve-hour workday.

We just made it optional.

“Nobody is making you work twelve hours.”

Right.

And nobody is making the rent increase faster than wages.

Nobody is making groceries cost more.

Nobody is making healthcare expensive.

Nobody is making childcare cost more than a car payment.

Nobody is making housing unaffordable.

Nobody is making wages fail to keep pace with the cost of living.

It’s all just one enormous coincidence.

And if you’re exhausted because you’re working sixty hours a week to afford the privilege of being alive, apparently the problem is your attitude.

Maybe you need better time management.

Maybe you need a side hustle.

Maybe you need to “work smarter.”

Because apparently the solution to an economy that requires people to work more hours is… more work.

Which brings us to today.

Because somehow we’ve managed to turn Labor Day into a celebration of labor while simultaneously spending decades telling workers that unions are evil.

We’re told unions are greedy.

We’re told unions are corrupt.

We’re told unions destroy businesses.

We’re told workers should simply negotiate individually with their employer.

Which sounds fantastic until you remember that “individual negotiation” between a person who needs a paycheck to keep a roof over their head and a corporation with lawyers, accountants, executives and a human-resources department isn’t exactly an even playing field.

It’s like telling a guy with a butter knife that he should negotiate individually with a tank.

“Just know your worth, bro.”

Meanwhile, some of the same politicians who will be standing in front of an American flag this weekend wishing everyone a Happy Labor Day have spent their careers supporting policies designed to weaken organized labor.

They’ll celebrate the American worker while opposing the mechanism through which American workers have historically gained power.

They’ll praise the middle class while supporting policies that make it harder for workers to organize.

They’ll talk about “hard-working Americans” while complaining about workers demanding higher wages.

And they’ll tell you that unions are unnecessary because workers are free to leave.

Sure.

And you’re free to leave your apartment if your landlord raises the rent.

You’re free to leave your health insurance if the premiums become unaffordable.

You’re free to leave your job if your boss decides your paycheck isn’t worth what it used to be.

Freedom is a wonderful thing when you have options.

For millions of workers, the choice isn’t between a shitty job and a better job.

It’s between a shitty job and unemployment.

And that’s precisely why collective bargaining mattered.

Labor Day is also a reminder of something we’ve become remarkably good at forgetting:

The economy isn’t a machine. It’s people.

Corporations don’t stock shelves.

Corporations don’t drive trucks.

Corporations don’t pour concrete.

Corporations don’t teach kindergarten.

Corporations don’t nurse your mother back to health.

Corporations don’t repair power lines at two in the morning during a monsoon.

People do.

Workers do.

And somehow we’ve spent decades convincing ourselves that celebrating the people who actually perform the work is somehow an attack on the people who own the company.

It isn’t.

There’s nothing inherently anti-business about believing the people generating the value should receive a reasonable share of it.

In fact, you could argue that’s one of the most fundamentally American ideas imaginable.

Because here’s the thing about capitalism:

Capitalism doesn’t require workers to be poor.

It doesn’t require executives to be obscenely wealthy.

It doesn’t require a company to squeeze every last penny out of its employees simply because it can.

Those are choices.

And we’ve spent a remarkable amount of time pretending they’re laws of nature.

So this Labor Day, by all means, enjoy the three-day weekend.

Fire up the grill.

Drink something cold.

Watch some football.

Take the kids somewhere.

Buy the ridiculously overpriced mattress that has apparently been “70% off” since 1987.

Enjoy the last unofficial weekend of summer.

But maybe take a second to remember what we’re actually celebrating.

We’re celebrating workers.

We’re celebrating people who stood up and said, Maybe working twelve hours a day until we’re dead isn’t actually the American Dream.

We’re celebrating people who understood that one worker has very little power—but workers together have a voice.

And maybe, just maybe, we should be a little suspicious of the people who suddenly become enormous fans of labor every September while spending the other 364 days explaining why labor shouldn’t have any power.

Because if your idea of Labor Day is:

“Thank you, workers! Now get back to work.”

…you may have missed the fucking point.

Happy Labor Day.

Enjoy your three-day weekend.

You know, the one workers had to fight for.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Equality Isn’t a Pie

Apparently, we’re having the conversation again.

You know the one. The conversation about women’s rights, equality, civil rights, who deserves what, who had it harder, who is supposedly taking something away from whom, and the apparently revolutionary concept that maybe—just maybe—every human being should be treated like a human being.

And somehow, after all these decades, we still have people who hear “women should have equal rights” and translate that into “women should take over the world and men should live in caves.”

Because apparently equality is a zero-sum game.

Apparently, if someone else gets more rights, dignity, opportunity, representation, or freedom, there must be a corresponding deduction from my personal account.

Congratulations! Someone you don’t know just received equal pay. Your freedom balance has been reduced by 14 points.

That’s not how this works.

Gloria Steinem wasn’t arguing that women should become the new ruling class. The women’s movement wasn’t fundamentally about replacing one hierarchy with another. It was about challenging the idea that gender should determine what opportunities you’re allowed to have, what you’re allowed to do with your life, what you’re paid, how you’re treated, or how much control you have over your own existence.

And that’s really no different from what Martin Luther King Jr. was fighting for.

He wasn’t asking America to give Black Americans some special collection of rights that white Americans didn’t have. He was asking America to stop pretending that the rights it claimed were universal somehow came with an asterisk.

Equal rights means equal rights.

That’s the part that seems so remarkably difficult for some people to understand.

If I’m a middle-aged white guy—and I happen to be one—my rights don’t become smaller because a Black woman has the same rights I do.

My freedom doesn’t diminish because a gay man can marry the person he loves.

My citizenship doesn’t become less valuable because an immigrant becomes an American.

My voice doesn’t become quieter because another person finally gets a microphone.

And my manhood certainly doesn’t become threatened because a woman doesn’t need my permission to determine what happens to her own life.

Rights aren’t a pizza.

There isn’t a finite number of slices sitting on the table with a bunch of minorities standing around waiting for their piece. If somebody gets another slice, I don’t suddenly have less pizza.

That’s the bizarre psychological trap we’ve created around equality: the assumption that fairness must mean somebody is losing.

But that’s only true if the original arrangement was inherently unfair.

And perhaps that’s the uncomfortable part.

If you’ve spent your entire life benefiting from a system that automatically gave you certain advantages because of the color of your skin or the sex you were born with, equality can sometimes feel like discrimination.

Not because you’re actually being oppressed.

Because you’re no longer receiving the automatic head start.

There is a difference.

And here’s another inconvenient historical fact: many of the people who have fought for equality weren’t asking for domination. They were asking to be included in the promise America had already made.

Life, liberty, equality, justice.

Those aren’t supposed to be members-only benefits.

And this is where the whole conversation gets particularly strange when people wrap themselves in Christianity while simultaneously arguing that equality somehow threatens them.

Because the guy they’re supposedly trying to follow wasn’t exactly a wealthy white American businessman.

Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew living under Roman occupation.

He spent an extraordinary amount of his time talking about compassion, humility, helping the marginalized, caring for the poor, loving your neighbor and treating other people as you would want to be treated.

He didn’t spend much time explaining how important it was for the people at the top to make absolutely certain nobody below them accidentally received the same rights.

Which makes the modern interpretation of Christianity occasionally fascinating.

Apparently Jesus said, love your neighbor.

And somewhere along the way, we translated that into:

Yes, but only if your neighbor looks, thinks, votes, worships and lives exactly like you do.

That’s quite an editorial revision.

The truth is, equality doesn’t require me to surrender anything that was legitimately mine.

It requires me to surrender the idea that something belongs to me simply because someone else was denied it.

That’s a completely different proposition.

I don’t lose my humanity when another person gains theirs.

I don’t become less free because somebody else becomes freer.

And I don’t need to be afraid of equality unless the thing I’m afraid of losing is inequality.

That’s the uncomfortable question worth asking.

When someone says, “If they get equal rights, what happens to me?”

My answer is pretty simple:

Nothing.

You still get to be you.

You still get your rights.

You still get your freedom.

You just don’t get extra rights because you happened to be born with less melanin in your skin or with a particular collection of chromosomes.

And honestly, as a middle-aged white guy, I’m perfectly comfortable with that.

Because I’ve never believed my rights were valuable because somebody else had fewer.

I’ve always thought they were valuable because they’re supposed to belong to everybody.

That’s the whole fucking point.

Equality isn’t about taking something from me.

It’s about finally admitting that it was never mine to own in the first place.