Some forms of slavery are less unpleasant than others. Some are downright pleasant, in fact, if you have the smarts or the luck to weasel your way into them. But if you're not working for yourself, part of your labor is always contributing to someone elses' wealth, not yours, and that is slavery. It's called Theory of Surplus Value. Look it up. It's not good or evil, its a law of nature.

Of course, it is impossible to operate an economy or society where everyone works for himself, so the issue becomes to allow the wage worker to keep as much of his labor value as possible, while providing return on investment, taxes, maintenenance, interest, dividends, overhead, and, of course, profit for the businessman. After all, the boss takes risks, invests money, and sometimes he even works his ass off (or hires some suit to do it for him), he should get paid too, and well. So in essence, the goal of political economy is to see to it the slavery is as painless as possible to everyone involved, and if some prosper more than others it is because they provide more than others. That is not too much to ask. And the role of government is to make sure those with economic power and financial resources do not abuse those who don't have them. Got that? It's the important part.

Don't let the rhetoric from the Right obscure the issue. Look at the people you know. Those who work for someone else know they're being exploited, that's why they can't wait to start their own business so they can exploit their workers. For them, bosses are greedy, conniving lowlifes. THey deserve to get taken to the cleaners because they have too much money anyway, and accumulated it off the sweat of others. Those who have others working for them struggle tirelessly to pay them as little as possible, and reduce their workforce as much as they can. For them, workers are lazy, stupid, crooked and lack ambition. They deserve to get screwed; nice people (like those who employ others) would not put up with living that way. By their definition, those who chose to work instead of employ others (oh excuse me, "provide employment for others"), are obviously weak and helpless and deserve their second class citizenship. Those not working at all will do anything for a steady paycheck, even a totally inadequate one (which sure sounds like slavery to me).

Of course, those who feel they should be in the ownership class who are broke invariably see themselves as the victims of some government plot or revolutionary cabal that, if it were done away with, would allow their obvious talent and ambition to be unleashed so they could claim their entitled position of prosperity and leadership. Narcissism and paranoia.

It boils down to this. When my creditors come to the door, they don't care why I don't have any money. When I go get my paycheck, I don't care if the boss is having cash flow problems. And when my boss fills out the payroll, all he cares is paying as little as possible. Life is a zero-sum game, and everybody is out for number one. Most people are inherently decent and don't want to deliberately and maliciously profit off the misery of others; but we all, labor and manangement, are capable of finding excuses to do exactly that when there isn't enough to go around for everybody. The problem is that in this never-ending struggle, one side has all the lawyers, guns and money.

So how does this impasse get resolved? We deal. We negotiate, we bargain. Businessmen should know all about that, they negotiate with other businessmen all the time. But they don't like to negotiate with workers. Workers should do what they're told.