An insatiable American work ethic is what attracts immigrants to the United States. So, when Americans lament the arrival of would-be workers, they’re in a very real sense yelling at themselves. Work begets work.
The excellent Barton Swaim has written in various ways that what turned the 2024 presidential election was electorate unhappiness on both sides about the arrival of people at unruly borders. The view here is that Swaim could be persuaded that the electorate wasn’t mad about the arrival of workers, rather it was mad at the look. Central planning is unattractive, and the entrance of people into a nation at its borders is a sign that an economic phenomenon is being centrally planned.
Back to the American work ethic, it will grow. That’s because the proliferation of better AIs will free every American to specialize even more, thus increasing their passion for work.
This contrasts with what was arguably a false note in Swaim’s latest piece on the work situation, “America Loses Its Will to Work.” It was so pessimistic. With passages like “The weakening of America’s protestant work ethic” and “American society has seemed to turn away from its presuppositional faith in remunerative labor,” Swaim gave the impression that immigrants arrive in greater numbers the less Americans embrace work. No, it’s the opposite.
Assuming Swaim is incorrect, what informs it is that he based part of his argument on the scholarship of AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt. Eberstadt has persistently painted a negative portrait of the U.S.’s future defined by demographic decline worsened by American men exiting the workforce. Forward looking markets continue to reject Eberstadt’s analysis.
Falling birthrates describe what’s taking place in all the developed world. South Korea, for instance, has the lowest birthrate in the world alongside the highest suicide rate, yet capital is flowing in, not out. South Korea isn’t unique.
As for the American male exiting the workforce, AIs are by their very description what will lure the sidelined back. And that’s because a growing number of hands, whether human or automated, never shrink work opportunities, rather they expand them in ways that reward a growing number of skills formerly suffocated by too little economic growth. This was the argument made in my 2018 book, The End of Work. Its working title was The End of Laziness, and it was the unread counter to Eberstadt’s heavily read pessimism.
The book argues that no one is lazy or dumb, but that some are made to appear that way by limited opportunities that have nothing to do with what animates their work ethic and brains. If Swaim had been born in 1872 instead of 1972, he likely couldn’t have done the work – writing – that so vivifies his genius. Though he couldn’t have exited the labor force if born 100 years earlier, he likely would have had yearnings to do just that.
Looking ahead, this won’t be true. What does for us doesn’t put us in breadlines, rather it lifts us. In the process, every capable hand and mind in the world is rendered more, not less employable. Thought of in terms of the immigrants whom Swaim properly laments the rounding up of at places of work like Home Depot, a future immigration demagogue in the White House will have to continue to send ICE agents to places of work, albeit much higher paying businesses.
Which means Swaim is once again way too pessimistic. What will elevate an already passionate American love of work is exactly what will attract many more who are American in all ways but birth origin.
