Is work valuable for a lot *more* than just the income?

Working--doing a job, whether on your own or employed by another--creates in the mind a vivid, unforgettable link between actions and consequences.

Few human behaviors have a tighter, more effective feedback loop between actions and consequences than work.  Working hard all day and having the boss hand you cash at the end of the day or week is amazingly effective at shaping behavior.

Working--coming home dog-tired after busting your ass for 8 or 10 or 12 hours straight--not only gives a sense of accomplishment and pride, but--equally important--also creates respect for the work of others.

People who don't work, and have only worked rarely during their lives, have a far harder time making the crucial connection between actions and consequences.  Moreover, they often lack the respect for the work one must normally do to buy things.  Thus one would expect such people to have little moral objection to stealing, since they don't really internalize the amount of work their victim had to do to get the thing they stole.

Same argument for fraud--which is a kind of theft.

Thus a good case can be made that work is essential to creating moral and ethical behavior in humans.

If so, you'd think it would be obvious that laws creating government programs that reduced the number of jobs, or gave people an extra incentive to quit working, would never be passed.

So why do so many such laws exist in the U.S.?  Well, until 2008 laws were made exclusively by congress, and for the last 80 years or so Democrats had majority control of congress about 94% of the time.  (And in fairness, during those brief intervals when Repubs had a majority they kept the gusher of government programs flowing.)

Now all Democrat pols--and half the Repubs--have come to believe that the only reliable way to create more jobs is to pass laws that let the *government* do the hiring.  But of course this is financially disastrous, since the government has to borrow money to fund its expenditures even now.  But it's impossible to convince a Democrat that this constitutes a valid argument against creating government jobs!

I'd love to tell you that I see hopeful signs in arcane figures published by little-known agencies or analysts, and that we're on a slow road to recovery.  Unfortunately I don't--and believe me I've tried everything I can think of to devise a solution for America's current problems.

But don't worry:  As long as the politicians don't increase taxes on the working class, those who work will continue to make ends meet, even if they aren't able to afford vacations or luxuries like going to the movies.  For the most part what you'll see is 1) streets getting worse, as cities delay maintenance so they can spend the money elsewhere; 2) burned-out streetlights and those knocked down by cars on urban freeways will stay out/down longer, same reason; 3) cities will shut down more pools, parks and similar "commons" areas; 4) police will get much more aggressive in issuing traffic tickets and tickets for other city-code violations, as a revenue-raising measure; 5) commodities being temporarily out of stock; 6) rolling blackouts as electric utilities prevented from adding capacity bump into their max limits; 7) flattening of college enrollments; 8) gradual aging of the automobile stock, as people on the margin keep their cars another few months or years; 9) an increase in crime, especially in jail-capacity-limited states like California, which has started letting criminals do GPS-ankle-bracelet house arrest even for felony theft.