Gingrich Didn’t Go Far Enough in Criticizing Americans’ Work Ethic
Current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich has diagnosed a major problem with our society.
Well, he almost did. During a recent interview, I told him that I thought he had made a very good point about the diminishing work ethic of many Americans. But, I said, he hadn’t gone far enough. He should have widened his net to include a host of people that he hadn’t thought of.
“I’ve been talking a little bit about the importance of work,” Gingrich recently told reporters at a press conference in New York, “particularly as it relates to people who are in areas where there is public housing and where there are relatively few people who go to work.”
There it is. “People who are in areas where there is public housing.” In other words, poor folks. Those are the people Newt thinks need the lesson about how to work.
To illustrate his point, he asked the roomful of assembled journalists: “How many of you earned some money doing something before you were 10 years old, whether it was cutting grass or babysitting or something?”
Gingrich submits that, with successful people, it tends to be the case that they got an early start learning about the value of work, and the importance of holding down a job.
Of course, not everyone learns those lessons. And Gingrich zeroed in on one group in particular. He pointed out that, for instance, with African-American teenagers, the unemployment rate is a staggering 43 percent. So he submits that government should help create a “pathway to work” so that “people get in the work habit and learn the skills to be successful.”
Gingrich is right to try to engage Americans in a discussion about the importance of working and to suggest that some people have never learned the value of holding down a job.
But he is wrong to limit the indictment to poor people, those who live in “public housing,” and African-American teenagers with high unemployment rates. The lack of a work ethic is a major problem, but it’s also a mainstream one.
Newt has the right message, and it’s an important one. But he needs to take it to the well-to-do suburbs and the country clubs. That’s where they really need to hear it.
In fact, as someone who speaks to groups all over the country, I worry less about students from poor families who lack resources and opportunities than I do about those from the upper middle class who lack passion and purpose. Poor kids often have a fire in their belly. Upper middle class kids can sometimes be harder to motivate, especially if they’ve never been taught to work by their parents.
OK, chump: give us percentages of legal and illegal hispanics on welfare among hispanics and compare with percentages of legal and illegal whites on welfare among whites.
75% of Mexican immigrants(legal and illegal) are on welfare.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/04/most-illegal-immigrant-families-collect-welfare/
A believable statistic cant be a round number. Needs decimal places.
Why do ethnic people always get defensive and fail to look at facts? Poor people have poor ways-that is why they are poor. If you work, you succeed. If the majority of poor people are ethnic than it is a fact that they do not have a good work ethic.
It certainly is not something he wants to dwell on. It is also not certain that it is the fault of most American citizens. Twenty five years ago the numbers of hours worked per thousand of population of the US exceeded that of the Japanese. That was the height of the Reagan Boom and gainful employment was so available that the Grocery had a fourteen year old on check out, operating the register. They were too short on people to bag.
That sort of economy is not an accident. Harding/Coolidge built in the twenties, Kennedy had it Reagan had it and Newt gave it to Clinton until they got rid of Newt and then according to Bob Novak the corporate economy plunged 30% in the following two years.
white kids in suburbs who don’t know how to work or even hold a broom and sweep a garage…
Sounds like Occupy Wall Street, doesn’t it?
Of course the tired nonsense about “lazy Americans” is just the prelude to another dose of intellectually dishonest rhetoric promoting open borders.
Newt makes a good point, as do you, Ruben, but I think the emphasis is on what the government can do in the cases cited– I would argue that a “path to work” simply wouldn’t be effective in the case of spoiled, middle-class kids. I think people are as lazy as their options allow– in a situation where the parents taking care of you is always an option, government coercion would have little effect.
It breaks my heart that, at the height of our worst recession/depression since the Big One, we have to import 100,000+ migrant workers (the legal ones) to work on farms, when we have a large numbers of 18-25 year olds sitting around, collecting a check.
We don’t HAVE to import them. We’ve just made it harder to hire US citizens than “migrant workers” and criminal aliens.
If we’d ignore idiots like Ruben, kick the Mexicans back home so they can deal with their problems there, and make it easier to hire Americans…
I live in a relatively rural community where farming is predominant. From the nature of feedback I have heard over the course of the 14+ years that I have lived here, I get the distinct impression that many would be happy to hire young American workers but, generally speaking, they don’t opt for working the fields at harvest time. These people don’t have any choice but to hire Mexican immigrants (many of whom I figure are illegals).
Bob, you’re full of it.
Santa Barbara County employed LEGAL people for their enormous fruit, veggies and vineyards dotting the Central Coast & inland.
These legal people were paid a good wage, including health insurance, vacation pay etc.,
Around the mid 90′s the owners of said places started employing aliens to do the work for far lower wages, benes. Though what’s less pay to an illegal when many send the majority of their pay back to Mexico/Central and South America and each year they illegally live in the USA more and more caveats are laid at their feet.
In-state college tuition/ scholarship programs for illegals only, Section 8 Housing, food stamps, more welfare money per kid their old lady pops out, ACLU, Hispanic Caucus, City Council & other government suckups who cater to those ‘living in the shadows’.
So please save your (and Ruben’s for that matter) song & dance about the lazy middle class kid.
The ‘middle class kid’ usually grows up to be a middle class person.. who’s a plumber, a police officer, sheet metal worker, carpenter, professor, scientist, nurses, medics and MILLIONS of other fields.
You know, jobs which Ruben Navarrette and his Illiberal ilk are too chickens hit or lack the testicular fortitude/know-how to attempt.
Rubes, the last I heard standards were being DRASTICALLY lowered from their already abysmally low passing grade for Blacks to join the Dayton, Ohio Police Department.
Not to mention a certain ‘wise Latina’ before her ‘earning’ a spot on our Supreme Court tried to stop White firefighters who’d EARNED their increase in rank because not enough Mexicans/minorities passed the ‘unfair’ test.
You don’t know jacks hit about ‘middle class’ Ruben. Though you sure know a thing about Class, Ethnic envy.
If Whites, Asians were given as much babysitting/monies/lowered standards for success (i.e. cheating) as ESL students, school provided ‘everything’ children, but that won’t happen.
For most middle class kids DON’T want a handup/handout or whine about such trivial matters. You know.. kind of like what Ruben did to Gingrich. What a simp.
Interesting theory. While out of work in upstate NY I attempted to get work picking apples. They laughed at me. They said “No gringos.” I tried the same thing 10 years later in California. They laughed at me again. They said I would not fit in because I was not fluent in Spanish.
I don’t know where you grew up, but in the middle class borough of NYC where I was raised all kids 16 and over worked. If you didn’t work people thought you were a loser – it just wasn’t done. It was how people paid for their used cars and wardrobes, at the very least. Personally, I worked full time through HS nights and weekends totaling 37+ hours) and College (every spare moment) as my parents were not really interested in supporting me. I must say that my wide experience with low-paid retail jobs and summa cum laude graduation from college did nothing but set me up for a rosy future of low paid work. There’s something to be said for refusing to do chump work too — lest you spend the rest of your life as a chump.
“Newt makes a good point, . . .”? Newt—and Mitt—appear to have mastered the political technique, as taught in the ancient Greeks’ schools of oratory for aspiring political leaders: tell the people what they want to hear, . . . in an interesting or enticing way—that and, little else beside.
In all, in his ever-specious presentations, Newt is about the last person I would wish to hear, hold forth on things relating to work.
But whatever he might say—be sure of this, except for chasin’ women and hoisting a cup, Newt’s not going to actually do anything related to physical effort and pertaining to productive activity—by the looks of all, if Newt’s to end up in Gehenna, he’s got one helleva pile a money to drag along with him, . . .
“But he needs to take it to the well-to-do suburbs and the country clubs. That’s where they really need to hear it.”
Yes. I find it disturbing that 14, 15, and sixteen year olds have no job experience of any sort. They’ve all got swollen fingers from video vamping, cell phones to flatten their ears, cars to tool around in, and parents who seem oblivious to the harm they’re doing. … and an expectation that all things in life are delivered via FedEx.
One of the reasons that teenagers, black, white or Hispanic, are having difficulty finding jobs is because of minimum wage standards constantly rising. The Democrats promote themselves as the supporters of the “working class”, but legislate policies that often hurt many poor. Minimum wage requirements often help the unions that have their wages tied to minimum wage laws passed by governments, while hurting those employers that cannot afford to carry the same amount of workers at the higher minimum wages.
Why? It’s illegal for a 14 or 15-year-old to work in most states! Sixteen is the minimum age for work in most jobs and for that you need working papers from your high school and parental permission. Were you raised in a Dickens novel?
Mr. Navarette. Albeit there are plenty of spoiled brats out there living in golf-course communities who have no intention of working until they absolutely have to, the anti-work, anti-education ethic that tells young blacks that these things represent “acting white” is a real problem among this group that lives in public housing & blighted neighborhoods where people don’t dare to open a gas station or Jiffy Mart type stores. If you don’t see this, you don’t have your eyes open.
Good point. A community’s ability to attract businesses also has an effect on job creation. A couple of years ago, in a New York City suburb, a group of investors wanted to build a mall nearby. The local elected committeeman would not allow the mall unless workers were payed a minimum of $10/hour. The mall was never built, which would have created many jobs for the local residents. Instead the public official that nixed the project, a Democrat who held his elected position since he was 21 years old, bragged about how he would not allow his constituents to work for slave wages.
Exactly what work ethic do you have in mind, Ruben? That old time Protestant work ethic carried by those old archaic sexist and racist an antisemitic WASPS that colonized the world through the Industrial Revolution after three hundred years of fighting off Ottoman invasions while the Catholics found the time to take down the Aztecs and Incas on the cheap before the scientific revolution got rolling? Or is it the Marxian labor theory of value work ethic you have in mind where only the exploitation of menial sweat (slave labor in the Roman sense or socialist labor in the modern sense) can produce surplus added value–so we need more imported peasant gardeners and maids for those urban latifundias in Beverly Hills because upscale party hardy pill popping baby boomers failed to knock out enough babies during the endless summer of their lives? So, if the work ethic is such an issue, Ruben, are we to believe that somehow gay soldiers now serving openly in the military will somehow make up for the dearth of volunteers showing up for the draft in the next “unjust war,” especially, like father like son, after those upscale baby boomers currently running for president sat out the last draft? Perhaps you have in mind that old do as I say rather than I do work ethic?
Not sure of the point, Ruben.
Spoiled, rich WHITE kids…you have a problem with them? Ok, other than the racist undertone so obvious in that approach, what are the societal ills that need to be addressed in the “country clubs”?
Gang crime? Lack of diplomas? Too many parasites on the welfare rolls? Unemployment rampant? Violence?
Frankly, in terms of needing to improve conditions, employment, crime, gang warfare, lack of complete education, assimilation into society…where would you rank the “country clubs”? Seems to me that statistically speaking, the blight on society, the burden on society, the negative impact on society is so slight…as to not even register.
So, exactly what point is being made here? It seems it is simply a class warfare, race warfare, ethnic warfare assault with not an ounce of other credible import.
So, let’s take that for what it is. An attack on white people, to call them lazy, their children lazy and blame them “equally” for societal ills…if not moreso than non-white, non-suburban, non-country clubbers.
You really want to go there, Ruben? Brad Meltzer did a “Decoded” episode on Mexican organized crime in this country. Did you see it?
Try to find it on the History Channel. Then come back and tell us that our biggest concern ought to be in the suburbs, with the culture of the “white country clubbers”.
I will say this. The organized criminal element are anything but lazy.
What’s the problem with mentioning color? It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the speaker to notice that people associate by color; you don’t have to be a genius to understand most black Americans generally trust other black folks compared to whites. Once this type of self-segregation is done, a culture emerges with shared views and values inside that culture that deviate from values and views outside that culture.
Once this is established, it is not a great leap of logic to imagine those different cultures experiencing different degrees of success in the world. This can be either bad or good. To posit that anyone who observes failure in black communities is a racist is stupid. The English used to have a great disdain for the French, maybe they still do. Because there was no skin color involved, people took that disdain as a judgement call, right or wrong and not naked bigotry.
As it turns out, the English ran the French out of every overseas empire they tried to establish. European Americans run other groups out of general competition in the world as well. It’s just simple observation.
Learn to adapt to that and a person will work harder to improve. Fail to do so and people will blame others and obstructionists and never see the failure in themselves and their own values.
honesty I agree with you. But its the Progressive minorities first line of defense…racism, the the old “but what about them!?” line. im not a gingich fan but I agree with what he is saying. unfortunatly blacks and minorities have had at least 40-60 yrs of being spoon fed that they are opressed and owed a living. they demanded, freedom and equality and when they got it they still fail because they are made to believe that ‘equality’ means i get a car, they get a car. either someone else owes you or you are opressed. Any self reliance or achievement not of the approved way akak crime, music or sports, any variation on speech, voting, achievement etc means you are ‘white washed and selling out’. its true color has nothing to do with it. but blacks and victocrats like ruben need large scale invisible enemies to blame their lack of achievement on.
But there’s a wrinkle in the adapt or perish thinking when we look at Blacks in the US. In the 1950s there really wasn’t a lot of cultural difference between Blacks and Whites in the rural areas of America, mostly the South, where most Blacks then lived. There was little opportunity outside agricultural labor for either poor Blacks or poor Whites but admittedly, Whites had better access to whatever opportunity there was. So, throw in some outright discrimination and you had a somewhat higher criminal behavior and incarceration rate with black males than whites, but going to jail was a part of the culture for most poor men in the rural areas of America. Marriage rates were about the same for Blacks and whites. Illigitimacy rates were about the same. They went to separate churches, but they went to church
Then came the Great Society, the Civil Rights Movement, and a dramatic push for Black social and political separatism. If it represented “white” culture, Blacks were told by their leaders not to do it, and it included getting educated and working. Now we have a Black culture that nobody would tolerate unless forced to; violence, crudity, misogyny, gangsterism, crime, 70% illigitimacy, almost no two parent homes, unpronounceable names so as not to take “slave names,” and on, and on. Sorry, but EEO or not, unless I were doing business in a Black area, and maybe not even then, I’m going to find a way not to hire some guy named Keeshaun or Antuan who speaks ebonics, reads at a third grade level if at all, has tats, hair in dreads, a grill, and a 9MM in his belt no matter how representative of “Black Culture” he might be. And it isn’t going to be because he’s Black, it is because he is a feral human and functioning in this society requires some degree of socialization to the major culture’s folkways and mores. If you want to do some good, offer some courses in Human 101.
ok to a certain extent I agree. better off parents need to instill good work ethics to avoid self entitled brats,(..ala OWS) but still support their own kids The kids may think they are too good for certain jobs even thn they can still build for the most part of what is left. The poor parents are still slightly different. they go out of their way to instill bad work ethics and then instill a deep seeded belief that they are owed a living and that any effort on their part to help themselves is selling out. a poor minority comming home from jail gets more respect than 1 comming home from college. THATS the difference. Its the progressive liberal mindset that they are owed, and they cannot do for themselves because of some imaginary force holding them down. There is always a hidden wall that keeps them from doing anything or so it is taught and any effort to climb out is treason. The poorest of the poor in America is still 1000 times better off than alot of ‘wealthy ‘ in other countries yet they are indoctrinated to believe that because someone esle worked and posseses something they dont and want they are ‘opressed’. Again this is the entire foiundation of the OWS movement. OWS= ‘you have something, i dont care if you earned it, i want it you owe me and im opressed because you wont give me waht i want for free’
“Newt has the right message, and it’s an important one. But he needs to take it to the well-to-do suburbs and the country clubs. That’s where they really need to hear it.”
It is astonishing to see how many kids today from well-to-do suburbs think they are entitled to just about everything. Their parents spend every last cent they have sending these kids to obscenely expensive colleges where far-left “teachers” usually encourage the idea that every American is entitled to just about everything. Free schools, free housing, high-paying jobs, free health care, everything should be given to everybody for nothing. The problem is, SOMEBODY has to pay for all of this. And when these same kids graduate from school and find out that there are no jobs, they actually have to work HARD for everything they want, and that the workplace is really about as vicious as the Coliseum was in Rome, they tend to get a bit disenchanted with life, probably like all those college kids who voted for Obama in 2008. Reality really does stink, doesn’t it?
Well, those same kids are four years older now and they’re going to vote in 2012. Maybe they should heed the words Winston Churchill once said, “A young man who isn’t a liberal doesn’t have a heart, and an old man who isn’t a conservative doesn’t have a brain.” Time to grow up and get a brain, kids. Maybe if you vote Republican this time around you will get a better economy that will enable you to get that job you need to get the things you want in life. And that’s what capitalism is all about, getting the money so that you can get the stuff that you want. I’ll bet you didn’t learn that in that expensive college, did you?
True, poor work ethic is seen in all classes – consider Paris Hilton. But the assertion that the message be directed to the rich because they “really need it” is wrong. Lazy rich kids will mooch off their parents, not taxpayers.
If we’re going to make fun of them for that, then I submit we make fun of their parents for how bad they typically are at tasks like doing a self-checkout at a grocery store. I’ve been to charity events where food baskets were prepared for the poor and the people unloading the trucks onto wooden pallets (don’t ask me why they didn’t just unload the pallets directly…) stacked the goods so poorly that it took four people chasing the pallet to keep the goods from falling when moved.
Work? Why should anyone seek to work hard when the benevolent state is going to soak up half their earnings and put them on equal footing with the welfare class? Why not ride in the wagon instead of having to pull it all the time?
Problem is Rubin’s not wrong. He just can’t/won’t recognize the most pressing, priority target because it puts a bullseye on a demographic he protects, at nearly all costs. So what does he do? Deflect. Its ok, Rubin. We know your MO. When you do your thing its like turning a spotlight exactly where you don’t want us to look.
I agree with the article’s premise, and I’ll add another example of the declining work ethic among middle-class children.
An additional malicious incentive is the forcing of ever larger proportions of college students to rely on need-based financial aid due to rising tuition.
When tuition is modest, students can try to pay for it with part-time jobs and summer earnings (including money saved during the high school years). But with high tuition offset by need-based financial aid, any money the student earns or has saved is subtracted from his aid package.
Here’s another reason for the declining work ethic amongst American kids: Dad works his buttocks off for a company for 15-20 or more years. Then suddenly, the company up and moves operations to West Bum Fork: Mexico, Asia etc. Dad’s out of work at 40 or 50 and can’t find anything in his field, because all the other companies that did the same work he did have packed up and left for WBF as well. So, Dad worked his arse off and what did he get? S C R E W E D. Royally screwed at that. Junior sees this and he’s discouraged.
Crazy checks and welfare at 18 in some states don’t help either. Maybe if we bring back the draft and give these kids a stint in the military where they can learn both discipline and skill, things will improve.
And while we’re at it, quit championing filthosexuality of various brands and return to moral stability. That Protestant work ethic someone mentioned so many posts ago wasn’t such a bad thing.
Oh please. What did dad get for working his butt off? A regular paycheck, contributions to Social Security and Medicare, and possibly other benefits. And when government regulations and taxation made it impossible for his company to continue to maintain a facility in the U.S. and turn a profit, dad got unemployment benefits and probably the ability to enroll in a taxpayer funded displaced worker training program.
Ruben,
Here in NJ, and I’m sure where you are in California, there are middle and upper middle class kids from a certain group who, for the most part, are disciplined, motivated, polite and imbued with a good work ethic.
That group is called “Asian Americans”. I live where the community is about 1/3 Asian, but when you go to a school concert, guess who all the advanced violinists, pianists are – Asian kids. Guess who dominates the honors classes – Asian kids (alright, some Jewish kids too.). Guess who even seems to lead the volunteer and charity work – Asian kids.
In fact, while kids of all races seem to get along well, the real divide here is not black/white or Anglo/Hispanic in my district; it’s Asian/Non-Asian.
Perhaps if people like Navarrette did not support minimum wage increases it would be easier for teenagers to find jobs. They are priced out of the market. My first job, at age 14, paid $0.50 per hour. That wasn’t much, but at least it was a job. As I learned to become more productive and dependable I received raises. But I am not about to pay $7.35 per hour to a 14-year-old who hasn’t even learned how to show up on time or be polite to his boss. Let me start him at $4.00 per hour and after he proves himself I will give him raises.
If people in the Third World have a work ethic that is superior to ours there is little sign of it. Americans generally don’t think standing in front of a wheelbarrow full of oranges all day is productive.
Brazil has finally equaled the UK in productivity, needing only 3 1/2 times as many people and a country larger than the 48 states to do so. And Brazil is the best in Latin America. What has prevented this native ingenuity and work ethic from being “equal” in the past? The answer is nothing, not a damn thing.
Make excuses for Brazil or any country in Latin America and stack them up against two world wars devastating Europe. Thanks for the stupid excuse factory and racism bud.
After a long and desperate search for a job, I managed to land a part-time position as lowest fileroom clerk in a large law firm. The company currently has a policy of no fulltime hires.
In under a month I was fulltime — backdated a week.
I get in at 8:00 and work till around 7:00, with 10 minutes or so out for lunch. I completely reorganized the fileroom (which was an utter disaster) and am now in charge of running it. I started there last April.
I was two months from landing on the streets, losing what few posessions I have acquired over a lifetime. What I cannot for the life of me understand is the complaisance of the overwhelming majority in these dangerously lean times. And this attitude (in my own personal experience) transcends all ethnic barriers.
I get a lot of guff about “stress”. I’ll tell you what’s stressful: Looking desperately for a job and not even getting an interview — THAT’S stressful. Working over ten hours a day is like a vacation, and a joyful one, at that.
Yet . . . by 19th-Century standards, I am a pathetic slacker. (Progressive Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed the probosed 60-hour work week to be “Communistic”.)
Mr. Jones,
Congratulations on finding employment, building back the pride lost in these economic dire straits, my friend.
Happy New Year to you and yours Sir.
Thanks. Your attitude is far from universal.
I have been told I am being cheated by the company. And called a scab — compared with the ones in Grapes of Wrath who showed up to do the job for less, so now everybody gets less. Told that if I put in extra work I was depriving someone else of a job.
Told I needed the advantage of unionization. Great. The place never would have hired me (or anyone) at union scale in the first place. And if they had, I’d be gone by now anyway — last hired, first fired, you know.
Also told the staff must resent me and my office manager must be conspiring against me. The day before Christmas holidays, I was summoned into the office manager’s office. “Surprise!” The staff presented me with a very touching card. And a wad of cash they had collected.
And the office manager gave me (by far) the best bonus ever handed out to anyone in that position (and told me if I quit she’d hunt me down and kill me). Dunno what raise I’ll get, but it will be something. And it was a very tough year for the firm. (Anyone who is under the delusion that law firms are not affected by recession simply has no clue.)
But to well over half the folks who know me (not anyone on the job, of course), I am a villain of first rank. I am the running dog enabling the exploiters. Traitor, tool of the 1%. Egad.
Speaking as someone who has family with their own practice, Law Firms in general get the short end when a minuscule of their colleagues are caught in nefarious situations.
I too am in a field that receives criticism, unsure financial well-being presently as well. The saving grace is my family, the man upstairs and feel good stories like yours.
Take care Evan and all. Have a fun albeit safe New Year.
Thanks again and good luck to you. I hope everything works out and you wind up safe and dry.
Happy New Year to all!
You have to admire guys who push pencils and sling b.s. for a living talking about the “work ethic”.
Pols and journalists might actually want to DO some work, before they start holding forth on the subject of work.
Mr. Navarettte has a fair point. In my day, all kids had summer jobs. Today, many don’t. In fact, it is not unusual for a kid to graduate from college without ever having held a job of any kind.
When they finally do land that first job, at age 22 or whatever, they are not awestruck by their huge salary. as I was when I compared my salary to all the little summer jobs I’d had. To the contrary, they are contemptuous of their salary because they compare it to the only salaries with which they are familiar — their parents’ salaries.
And you people call Ron Paul a racist? What’s that line about a plank in one’s eye, again?