The “work ethic” is a dirty trick we play on ourselves

Rationalizing away the pointlessness and indignity of low-waged work.

In Nebraska — and elsewhere — the forced-labor camps that some prisoners are sent to have been rebranded. They’re called “Work-Ethic Camps” now, and prisoners do 30–40h/week of hard labor for $1.21/day, interspersed with “intro to business” courses.

As Jamiek McCallum writes in Aeon: “If there was a formula for obliterating the work ethic, giving people undesirable jobs with long hours and barely paying them sounds exactly like it.”

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-work-ethic-became-a-substitute-for-good-jobs

McCallum is reiterating the thesis of his 2020 book, “Worked Over: How Round-the-Clock Work Is Killing the American Dream,” which presents discourse about work-ethic as “a severe anxiety about a fundamental precept of the American civil religion.”

https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/jamie-k-mccallum/worked-over/9781541618343/

Americans fret that a failing work-ethic is symbolic of national decline. Which is weird: hours for all workers rose by 13% between 1975 and 2016, and millennials are more likely than their elders to say “hard work is important to getting ahead.”