There's a lot going on in the first week of May. Be careful you don't get whiplash.
First, in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America, I am on strike. Every word in this column was cut and pasted from previous columns. I've just scrambled them so it wouldn't be so obvious.
Anyway, Monday was Mayday, May 1st. International Workers Day is still a big deal in lots of countries that aren't this one. Once it was kind of a deal in this one, too. It's an odd thing that almost everyone's parents and grandparents were in unions but the majority of the current generation votes for the party that put unions down.
My mother belonged to the United Mine Workers of America for 18 years. I'm thankful everyday for her union health and retirement benefits.
I'll just point out when unions in America were strong, a single person could support a family working 40 hours a week. There was a large middle class.
It's not a coincidence that the decline of unions was followed by the shrinking middle class. Today most Americans can't even support themselves on 40 hours a week, much less support a family.
Nothing is perfect including unions. They made it easy for the anti worker party to prevail. But the rights of workers shouldn't be erased because of the imperfections of organizations.
Everyone who works for somebody else deserves fair compensation in return for a fair amount of labor. And that labor shouldn't be provided by children. A union would not have allowed McDonalds to have 300 kids working illegally in Louisville.
Would you want your twelve year old manning the deep fryer? No more than your great grandparents wanted theirs digging in a deep mine.
Now if someone has wandered into this column lost, I promise this is not a call for any kind of socialist uprising. I'm just saying capitalism does not work without labor. The healthier the labor, the healthier the capitalist for the long haul.
Which is where this column reminds you of where we began. It is the first week of May and International Workers Day is quickly followed by the pinnacle event in the Sport of Kings.
We love the people who have it all and nothing shouts I have it all like having a horse running in the Kentucky Derby. And even though 99.99% of Kentuckians do not own a racehorse, about 90% of us can afford a ticket to see the race.
Which means every year 100,000 or so hard working Kentuckians go play dress up and hang out with their bosses just like they own those horses running around the track, too. I've done it myself and I'd do it again if I could get a helicopter in and out of Churchill Downs.
You know, like kings do.
There's an irony in May Day and Derby Day sharing the same week. I'm always intrigued by the tension and how we've evolved in the way we interact with each. It's like we've traded ring around the Maypole for a run for the roses.
In the words of Neil Young, I might live a thousand years before I know what that means.