Name’s Philip Randolph Wright.
Mister Wright if we are doing business.
I noticed something the other day.
Folks were busy adding community notes to a piece where I said there’s no such thing as unskilled labor. They brought definitions. Textbooks. Economic terminology. Charts proving some jobs require less training than others.
And that right there is where they missed the point.
This isn’t an argument about definitions.
This is an argument about reality.
Nobody comes into this world already knowing how to calm an angry stranger. Nobody’s born knowing how to run a line, keep a kitchen moving, stock shelves at speed, clean up after everyone else, or stand for eight hours smiling while somebody treats them like furniture.
Those things are learned.
They are practiced.
And they are paid for with patience most people couldn’t last a week doing.
Call it unskilled if you want. It still takes skill to do it well.
But even that isn’t the real issue.
The real issue is balance.
Because the question isn’t whether a job sounds complicated. The question is whether the people doing necessary work can live decently from it.
History answers that question plainly.
When people can’t live, systems don’t stay peaceful.
When enough folks feel locked out, the balance corrects itself. And history teaches us that correction is rarely gentle.
A fair wage isn’t a trophy for technical complexity.
It’s maintenance.
It’s the cost of keeping a society running without grinding itself apart.
Look at the worker behind the counter. The one who’s been insulted three times already this morning but still has to smile because the line keeps moving. The one managing tempers, schedules, shortages, and somebody else’s bad day — all while you’re upset your favorite seat isn’t open.
That’s labor.
That’s social labor.
That’s civilization held together by patience.
And it matters more than a lot of spreadsheets admit.
Now don’t misunderstand me. Commerce matters. Technology matters. Law, finance, markets — all fine things. Useful things.
But none of those systems eat lunch.
None of them farm food.
None of them clean buildings, run deliveries, sweep floors, or keep the lights on.
People do.
And if enough of those people decide the system doesn’t work for them, you can’t accountant your way out of it. You can’t lawyer your way through it. You can’t optimize your way past empty shelves and exhausted workers.
A society that refuses to value necessary work eventually learns who was actually holding things together.
So let me reframe this as plainly as I can.
“Everyone deserves a fair wage” is not a skills argument.
It’s a stability argument.
It’s a harmony argument.
It’s the polite version — the shirt-and-tie version — of saying that balance can be maintained willingly, or it can be restored the hard way.
I say this as someone who’s seen what happens when places get hollowed out. When work exists but dignity doesn’t. When people stop believing the system has room for them.
We can fix that.
But first we have to stop pretending one person’s labor is more human than another’s because the title sounds better in a meeting.
Work is work.
Pay people like they live here too.
Now you know, Jack.
