"Enjoy the long weekend": Kamala Harris, freedom from work, and sugar-high conservatism
Check on your business owner friends.
Good people have always been hard to find, but in 2021 people, period, are hard to hire.
Signing bonuses are not just for NFL players anymore. Restaurant groups offer them now. Applebee’s even gives would-be workers free appetizers, to sweeten the deal. Why wasn’t this always part of their strategy? It was never necessary. This is what companies do when they must, not because they want to.
VP Kamala Harris’s pre-Memorial Day tweet, urging people to “enjoy the long weekend,” had nothing to do with the fallen soldiers of American history, and everything to do with the future of work.
In this view, Memorial Day is a mere means to an end. It’s a “long weekend,” yes, but it’s more than that. It’s a window into your work-optional future.
The conservative reaction to the tweet is so predictable we could write it ourselves.
Lots of finger-wagging about the solemn nature of Memorial Day. Plenty of virtue signaling about how they’re Taking This Seriously, as the left just cackles through it.
“This isn’t about a long weekend,” they insist. But this is a normative view. It’s a wish. It shouldn’t be about a long weekend is what they mean to say.
What they’re missing is that Harris isn’t one inch confused what the weekend is about, or that its length is the point of the thing. That’s why she didn’t pull down the tweet.
Even when these attacks land, they miss the mark. The content of Harris’s tweet is easy enough to pick apart, even for a guy who believes each of us should honor Memorial Day in our own way.
But the context matters more. While you’re worried about clunky words, the ground has shifted underneath your feet.
Look around. Freedom from work is the battleground of this next decade. During the 2012 presidential election, Paul Ryan, the Republican VP candidate, said government assistance should be a hand-up, not a hammock.
Don’t look now, but the hammock has been built and is pretty damn comfortable. It’s under a shade tree and everything. There used to be a butler who brought iced tea or lemonade periodically, but he makes more collecting the enhanced unemployment.
The workers’ paradise of the 2020s is one where people are free from the need to work.
Given the tendencies of government, it’s more likely the hammock will be replaced with a king-sized bed than cut down.
You won’t remember the sugar high you got pwning dumb tweets.
But you will remember the moment it became damn near impossible to hire people.