Men without work: The death of a cherished institution

September 17, 2022

Freddy Gray speaks to Nicholas Eberstadt, author of Men Without Work, about why, despite good employment figures, American men aren't working in the same way they used to. In the podcast, Eberstadt offers great insight into the sad complexity of today's culture and economic malaise, with near-record non-participation in the labor force by American man of primary working years. In his updated book, Men Without Work, Eberstadt Makes his case for getting people back to work, families back together, and reducing disincentives to work.

One great problem is the result of the decline of institutions that most Americans once cherished, namely work, the family and organized religion. As Eberstadt, had we simply maintained the family structure common in America thirty years ago, the country would be in much better shape.

As another pundit noted this week, America's problems are primarily the sum of poor personal choices. The absence of the once Powderly positive effect of these three key institutions plays a big part. In the past, these institutions guided personal choices in a positive way, be it prudence, faith, work ethic, family values, or other of the long list of cultural strengths that most Americans under the age of thirty have never experienced.

As Eberstadt expresses, the economy has tended to split between two groups -- the subject of another of his books -- between the takers and the makers.

In A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic, one of our country’s foremost demographers, Nicholas Eberstadt, details the exponential growth in entitlement spending over the past fifty years. As he notes, in 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays. Today, entitlement spending accounts for a full two-thirds of the federal budget.

Eberstadt shows the unchecked spiral of spending on a range of entitlements, everything from medicare to disability payments. Eberstadt does not just chart the astonishing growth of entitlement spending, he also details the enormous economic and cultural costs of this epidemic. He powerfully argues that while this spending certainly drains our federal coffers, it also has a very real,long-lasting, negative impact on the character of our citizens.