November 25, 2025

Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Irish poet and playwright, The Portable Curmudgeon, Jon Winokur, ed. (New York: 1987), p.67

Everyone understands thrift as it has been part of the message to the middle and working classes for years, but whatever the subtext of “the dignity of labor” it has been lost in the anti-labor messaging of the last half-century? Any idea?

The preaching of thrift to the working class is small consolation when the pay rate is so meagre it allows no opportunity to demonstrate the virtue in action. Then again, as the old argument goes, if the poor didn’t waste their money on drink, they could afford health care, a mortgage, college for their kids, and maybe even a vacation in Aruba!