America Loses Its Will to Work

From the War on Poverty to ‘quiet quitting,’ we’ve stopped appreciating the value of honest labor

By Barton Swaim. Excerpts:

"Did the “war” bring victory? On the one hand, today’s poor live vastly more prosperous lives by any material measure than the poor of the 1960s. Talk of citizens living over or under a “poverty line” is meaningless, Mr. Eberstadt shows (Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute), the de facto line having risen so dramatically upward—a fact that has little to do with government transfer payments and almost everything to do with rapid economic growth in the postwar period."

"Three decades after the War on Poverty began, congressional Republicans passed, and a Democratic president signed, the most sweeping reform yet made to America’s welfare state. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 conditioned the most important forms of direct welfare payments on employment or the search for employment. Opponents predicted disaster. New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, formerly a critic of America’s welfare state, predicted that his colleagues who voted for the bill would “take this disgrace to their graves.” In fact, the reform succeeded. It moved millions off welfare rolls and into the labor market."

"The law mainly reformed Aid to Families With Dependent Children, which it renamed Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But expansions and liberalizations of other safety-net programs in succeeding years have negated the gains made by the 1996 law."

"We’ve known for years about the slow flight of working-age men from gainful employment. Mr. Eberstadt’s “Men Without Work” (2016) documents in painful detail the moral and psychological costs of men leaving the labor force since the mid-1960s. New and frightening is the phenomenon of “disconnection” among the young, both male and female. About 1 in 7 Americans 18 to 24, according to a recent Rand study, are neither working nor looking for work. Many young people support a “universal basic income”—a government payment to every American, regardless of income or employment status."