Few people in history have seen more jobs up close than Mike Rowe, the longtime host of the Discovery Channelโs hit TV show Dirty Jobs.
Now the blue-collar icon has a message for those who say โnon-essentialโ employees have no business working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a recent TV appearance with Dana Perino on โThe Daily Briefing,โ Rowe made it clear heโs not a fan of the terms โessentialโ and โnon-essentialโ worker. The problem with such a view, Rowe said, is that such terms have little actual meaning and the economy makes no such distinction.
โThereโs something tricky with the language going on here, because with regard to an economy, I donโt think there is any such thing as a nonessential worker,โ Rowe said. โThis is basically a quilt…and if you start pulling on jobs and tugging on careers over here and over there, the whole thing will bunch up in a weird way.โ
Roweโs message is precisely what FEE president and economist Zilvinas Silenas was getting at in a recent article published at Townhall.
โAllowing politicians to decide which businesses and products are โessentialโ is an invitation for disaster,โ Silenas observed. โIf we continue to deny these businesses the ability to do the one essential thing they are best atโproviding goods and services to millions of everyday Americansโwe risk more than unemployment or recession of stock price plunge. We deprive ourselves of the best resourceโour peopleโduring the time of need.โ
The truth is, all workers are essential.
Unfortunately, all too often what is deemed โessentialโ is simply whatโs convenient to state leaders making the decisions. Few would suggest that liquor store owners are inherently more essential than pizza parlor ownersโexcept perhaps state revenue collectors. No doubt this is the same reason Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer concluded that lottery tickets are essential, but gardening seeds are not.
Liquor stores and lottery tickets arenโt especially โessentialโ to Americans, just state budgets. But as one Washington State sheriff noted in April, this seems to be the criteria state leaders often use to determine what is โessentialโ and โnon-essentialโ: whether it helps the governmentโs bottom line.
When the state picks winners and losers itโs not only unfair, however. It’s also destructive.
As the great economist Leonard Read so artfully showed in the classic work “I, Pencil,” the economy is vast and interconnected. Individuals canโt make anything themselves, not even a simple pencil. Entrepreneurs and corporations rely on millions of others to provide the goods and services they require. No single central planner could possibly know all the materials that go into the countless life-sustaining products that propel our economyโand continue to propel us through the current pandemic.
The Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce politely pointed this out in March when they warned that many of the โnon-life-sustaining businessesโ closed by Gov. Tom Wolfโs orders were in fact crucial to the supply chain of other businesses.
Nearly two months later, the consequences of shutting down โnon-essentialโ businesses is even more apparent. The US supply chain is creaking, putting many sectors, small businesses, and American families at risk.
Economist Antony Davies and political scientist James Harrigan recently explained why these food disruptions are happening.
โWe cannot declare one business โunnecessaryโ without, by extension, declaring unnecessary every other business that relies on it, and every business that relies on those businesses,โ Davies and Harrigan write. โFood is necessary, and because of that delivery trucks are necessary, and because of that engine fuses and wiper blades are necessary, and because of that plastic packaging in which fuses and blades are sold is necessary, and on and on.โ
Harrigan and Davies make a similar point as Rowe using a different metaphor.
โOur economy is not a series of individual supply chains. It is a single, unified supply web. Cut the web in any place and the whole structure weakens,โ they write.
Quilt or unified supply web, the point is the same.
If state leaders wish to persist in these harmful lockdowns, they should consider using classifications that are at least more intellectually honest, such as โpreferredโ workers and โnon-preferredโ workers.
Because Mike Rowe is correct: all workers are essential.

Jon Miltimore
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, and Fox News.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.