5 September—Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo is quoted in this morning’s Republican-American on the problem of attracting, hiring, and keeping cops in that city: “[W]e essentially hear people are looking for more money and less work, a slower work pace.” Is comment necessary?

So let me join the hordes of public-sector employees (they’re all employees, but how many are workers?) who are celebrating Labor Day by not laboring. Instead, here are some pertinent quotations:

Without labor nothing prospers. —Sophocles

The end of labor is to gain leisure. —Aristotle

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor. —Ulysses S. Grant

In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization. —Nikola Tesla.