There are a lot of people in our country who are not getting today, Labor Day, off. Trash trucks were moving earlier today (I heard them while I was sleeping in). The burrito place around the corner is open from 9-3 (it's usually open from 7-7). And I'll go grocery shopping today and assume their hours aren't much different from usual.

We have a labor problem in our country. It's not the "illegals" who work jobs most Americans wouldn't do for less than most Americans would. It's not the people who haven't been able to find new work after losing their jobs a few years back--and these people aren't freeloaders, they are collateral damage from the mistakes of people who make more in a year than these unemployed will make their entire lives.

Nope, it's the wide chasm between the few at the top and the millions on the bottom. Sure, there are lots of people between the minimum wage and the CEOs, but there is still a huge step between the somewhat comfortable and the gilded towers.

In the first job I made almost twice minimum wage, I did the same work as people who were making salary with benefits that that came to at least twice, if not more, than me. It took me a little over two years to get really pissed about this. And the last straw was, after getting a $0.25 an hour raise, I was told I could come in a couple hours earlier to do the job no one wanted to do if I really wanted to make more money. I was already coming in at six in the morning (five on Saturdays), I wasn't gonna lose even more sleep for less than seventy-five extra bucks a week.

My next job doubled my yearly earnings instantly. Which says more about how little I was making before than what I was hired on at. Still, it took a couple years before I got kinda pissed about the difference between the owner and the rest of us.

In the third year I was there, the company made a million in profit (even after writing off as much of that profit they could, and firing three people who'd been there since the company was moved out of the owner's home office). Much of that profit came from accounts I worked on. The firings came from the other team, which was not producing as well. I'm rounding the numbers somewhat, but I'm not inflating them at all. The owner took 90% for himself and left the rest for everyone else who worked for the company (at that time, around 20) to fight over. Except most of us didn't get to fight, we were just told what we'd get. My share was $3,250 (minus taxes). It was the best bonus I'd ever get.

We had another great year after this, and quite a few people were hired. Some of them were good, some weren't. And still, the company did quite well. And still, most of the profits came from accounts I worked on. And yet, my bonus was smaller. And yet, the company built a $1.5 million vacation home in Vancouver for the owner and his family (who all got paychecks from the company, even though most did no work). It was called the Canada office. But the only people allowed to work from this "office" were members of the royal family. The rest of us could blow, even though our labor payed for the place. And, it was a tax write off for the company.

There were many broken straws at this company. Many things that built up over time that eventually led me to decide to leave. One of the big things was something I wrote in response to a very small raise I received about a year and a half before I left. I suggested that the company should pay people more for their contributions to the company. Merit raises, in other words. And promotions should occur from within the company, rather than the company's rather spotty record of hiring managerial positions from the outside.

Eventually the company did many of the things I suggested. But it wasn't until after I was gone. And I wasn't offered anything to stay on, which, I have to surmise, means they didn't want to reward me for pointing some of these inequalities out.

And I could continue this theme to my current job, which has frozen wages since I started over three years ago, but it would be a broken record.

Labor isn't prized in this country. Hard and productive workers are taken for granted. And after a few years of a "jobless recovery" on Wall Street, there is a sense that we've gotten as far on fewer workers making less as we can. Does this mean wages will go up? That the people at the top will hire more laborers?

Nope, they're just going to take their profits and bitch about how high taxes are. Even though they are at their lowest rates in decades.

So I'm not working for anyone but myself today.

Matt Worley can do the math.