On Labor Day, some thoughts from Adam Smith, the patron saint of capitalism

"Labour . . . is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. . . . It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command." Book I, chapter V, at 36.

"The real value of all the different component parts of price, it must be observed, is measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command. Labour measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself unto labour, but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit." Book I, chapter VI, at 53.

"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged." Book I, chapter VIII, at 83.