#143 Why Work?

Three million Americans quit working, but how are they living when “there is no free lunch”? We are Biblically commanded to work in order to serve our neighbors.  

 

How can three million people leave the workforce and still make a living?  Good question.  There is no free lunch, but these folks are eating something from somewhere. 

 

Poppy Fields

Andy Kessler writes in the Wall Street Journal recently and offers a couple of answers in his column titled, A Nation of Quitters.  The subtitle gives away the answer: A new class avoids work while living off their affluent parents.  Oh, so someone IS paying their bills, it’s just not them.  I read this quote from Mr. Kessler’s article to my sophomores at Dallas Baptist University this week, as an encouragement to them:  It is cultural malaise, motivational submission. Society now promotes mediocrity and calls it equity—witness the scarcity of SAT test-score requirements for college. Too many got a taste of not working and liked it.  Why is it an encouragement to them?  Because this does NOT apply to my DBU students.  The easiest way to be a big fish is to find a suitably small pond.  They are big fish in this pond of lazy, non-workers.  

Who is paying?  Parents. They can afford it: As of March, baby boomers were sitting on a whopping $71 trillion to spoil their kids with. Did you know that half of U.S. households currently support an adult child?

The Statler brothers sang Countin’ flowers on the wall in 1965 and the rockabilly remake by Eric Heatherly in 2009 is worth a listen.  A few lines: Countin’ flowers on the wall, that don’t bother me at all.  Playing solitaire til dawn with a deck of 51.  Smoking cigarettes and watchin’ Captain Kangaroo, now don’t tell me, I’ve nothing to do.  

Someday I will write an entire podcast on The Wizard of Oz as a political/economic allegory.  But I will limit myself to only one observation today.  The poppy field prevented Dorothy and her friends from reaching the land of Oz.  It represented things that distracted people from real life when L Frank Baum wrote the story in 1900.  Opium is made from poppies.  Today, it’s marijuana, video games, and Facebook.  The video game “Fall Guys” has 50 million players.  

Socrates said, “A life unexamined is not worth living.”  I like Oscar Wilde’s take, “A life unlived is not worth examining.” During a small family work project in the pasture last weekend, our granddaughter reminded her five-year-old brother, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”  That’s probably pretty good advice, and it’s Biblical.  When Paul gave folks that advice, in second Thessalonians, they were being lazy, because of their expectations.  They expected Jesus was going to return soon, so they were not working.  I like how Eugene Peterson worded it in The Message, 10-13 Don’t you remember the rule we had when we lived with you? “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” And now we’re getting reports that a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings are taking advantage of you. This must not be tolerated. We command them to get to work immediately—no excuses, no arguments—and earn their own keep

Oh, this will surprise you: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is getting Biblical on us:  She predicted in 2019 that the “world is going to end in 12 years....