Calculate your slave status before boasting of, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, European, or American freedom
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: For decades on or about April 15, I published a tax day column
pointing out that working Americans in our time are as enslaved as 19th
century blacks on cotton plantations. I never in 30 or more years saw
any response from any economist, historian, or anyone. I think my
statement was regarded as too fanciful for comment. People think of
slaves as beings of highly restricted mobility who are bought and sold
like commodities. In that sense, we are not slaves. But in a wider
historical sense we are.
A slave is a person who does not own his own labor. He is purchased
not to be abused and to have his mobility restricted. He is purchased
for his labor. Slaves were brought to the New World not because of
“racism,” but because resources were abundant and there was no work
force.
When a person bought a slave, he was purchasing labor, not as a wage
but as a property right of the slave owner. A wage earner, unlike a
slave, owns his own labor. He sells it in hourly or weekly increments or
not at all, whereas a slave owner purchases a lifetime of labor in the
purchase price. The slave owner, not the slave, owns the slave’s labor.
