Republicans are peddling a toxic myth about Americans’ work ethic

America, it seems, is suffering from an epidemic of laziness. Some of us work hard, sure, but our country is being dragged down by its idle masses, millions of indolent Americans who would rather lie about all day than contribute to the nation’s progress.

Or at least, that’s how some of our leaders tell it. While the idea that laziness is a crisis that must be addressed in policy is mostly a conservative obsession, even some Democrats — including President Joe Biden — can be heard reinforcing this premise. This is all the more bizarre because in truth, Americans are among the hardest-working people in the world.

H.L. Mencken once wrote that Puritanism was “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,” and many Republicans are equally haunted by the fear that some person somewhere may not be keeping their nose pressed hard enough to the grindstone. Or more specifically, that some poor person may not be working hard enough; they have no problem with wealthy heirs living off their trust funds.

Which is why they are in the midst of yet another push to add work requirements to programs like Medicaid, and increase the strictness of already existing requirements in programs like food stamps. “I don’t think many people think it’s right to be paying billions of dollars to allow people to sit at home,” says Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. “Let’s help people get lifted out of poverty into jobs,” says Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. In their view, what’s stopping Americans from being “lifted up out of poverty” is apparently nothing more than their own sloth. Make them suffer a bit, and they’ll finally get off the couch and get a job.

Sadly, even some Democrats fall into this kind of rhetoric. Biden recently tweeted that “Every American willing to work hard should be able to get a good job and afford good health care no matter where they live. That’s the American dream.” Why would Biden say that only people “willing to work hard” should have access to health care? Is there some problem with insufficiently industrious people going to the doctor?

It may be something the president said without giving it too much thought, but it offers a clue as to why, unlike every other industrialized country, we don’t have universal health care in America. When even a Democrat like Biden reinforces the idea that health coverage is something you have to earn with hard work, why should we just give it to everyone?

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For the record, research has shown that adding work requirements to Medicaid has no effect on employment among recipients, because it doesn’t force people to get jobs. Lazy people exist, of course, but the mythical layabout sitting at home saying, “I just love not having to work, since I’ve got this sweet health coverage” is a fiction. And in practice, work requirements means paperwork requirements. Recipients are forced to navigate a bureaucratic obstacle course; when they make a mistake, many lose their benefits even when they are working.

But to Republicans, those facts don’t matter. Their unshakable premise is that laziness is such a widespread and urgent problem that the government must sort those “willing to work hard” from those who aren’t, and punish the latter group for their moral failure. 

I’d wager that most Americans are unaware that in many of our peer countries, especially in Europe, people believe that work is a part of life, but not your entire life. And the laws there reflect that perspective. The European Union mandates at least 20 days of paid vacation per year — or an entire month off. Many European countries also require paid holidays, meaning that in much of the continent workers receive 30 paid days off or more. 

How many paid vacation days are required by law in the United States? Zero. We’re the only country among the advanced economies in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that requires no paid vacation, and also the only one that requires no paid family leave. In fact, we’re one of only six countries in the entire world with no paid family leave. And millions of us don’t use all the paid vacation offered by our employers, which amounts to working for free. Americans put in more hours than workers in most of our peer countries, yet we’re not producing more economic value than they are.

Despite all that, we’re constantly being told that we have to do something about American laziness. Remember the panic drummed up in many media outlets about the supposed epidemic of “quiet quitting”? We were told that workers were doing merely what was required of them in their jobs and no more — not answering emails on weekends, nor staying late to show their bosses how eager they were to contribute to the team. Horrors! 

Fair treatment, a living wage, some modicum of dignity — too many treat these not as basic entitlements of any human being, but something you must earn by demonstrating your industriousness. But only your boss or the government decides if you’ve proven your moral value. Even the American Dream — our national mythology — says that anyone can be rich and successful if they’re “willing to work hard.” Which means that if you aren’t wealthy, you must not be working hard enough.

We continue to believe this lie despite the fact that so many of us work plenty hard but struggle to maintain a secure economic existence, let alone get rich. Laziness is not a crisis, and politicians should stop lecturing us about how we all need to work harder. We work hard enough already.