Must-Read: Paul Krugman: The Laziness Dogma

Must-Read: Paul Krugman: The Laziness Dogma: “The real source of [J.E.B. Bush’s] remark was the ‘nation of takers’ dogma that has taken over conservative circles…

…the insistence that a large number of Americans, white as well as black, are choosing not to work, because they can live lives of leisure thanks to government programs. You see this laziness dogma everywhere on the right… the hidden background to Mitt Romney’s infamous 47 percent… the furious attacks on unemployment benefits at a time of mass unemployment and on food stamps… claims that many, if not most, workers receiving disability payments are malingerers… a vision of the world in which the biggest problem facing America is that we’re too nice to fellow citizens facing hardship….

Over the past few decades working-class white families have been changing in much the same way that African-American families changed in the 1950s and 1960s, with declining rates of marriage and labor force participation. Some of us look at these changes and see them as consequences of an economy that no longer offers good jobs to ordinary workers. This happened to African-Americans first, as blue-collar jobs disappeared from inner cities, but has now become a much wider phenomenon thanks to soaring income inequality. Mr. Murray, however, sees the changes as the consequence of a mysterious decline in traditional values, enabled by government programs which mean that men no longer ‘need to work to survive.’ And Mr. Bush presumably shares that view…. Mr. Bush’s clumsy call for longer work hours wasn’t a mere verbal stumble. It was, instead, an indication that he stands firmly on the right side of the great divide over what working American families need…. While Jeb Bush may sometimes sound like a moderate, he’s very much in line with the party consensus… [of] the laziness dogma…