Today’s announcement of unemployment rates for March has reminded me of an issue I wrote about a few years ago concerning work ethic and income. Today, the Associated Press reported:

Unemployment zoomed to 8.5 percent last month, the highest in a quarter-century, as employers axed 663,000 more workers and pushed the nation’s jobless ranks past 13 million. The hard times were only expected to get harder — a painful 10 percent jobless rate before long.

The current rate would be even higher — 15.6 percent — if it included laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have had to settle for part-time work because they can’t do any better. That’s the highest on record for that number in figures that go back to 1994.

In my paper, which was a rudimentary exercise in academic social research, I criticized an earlier article by Barry Bluestone in which he cites 10 primary reasons for income stratification. My primary criticism was that Bluestone ignored an important factor– work ethic. You can download a copy of my paper, “The Impact of Work Ethic on Income,” here.

Today’s unemployment report reminded me of this paper, because it raises yet another important factor– the economy at large. It would be interesting to research how an economic recession affects income stratification.

One of the most prominent arguments made by those who oppose immigration in the United States is that immigrants take jobs away from American citizens when they come here for work. I’m not sure that’s true. Or, if it is true, I don’t think it’s the real problem in any case. Brink Lindsey’s article about the implicitness of cultural deficiencies in economic and social stratification got me thinking. The general perspective of those who fear losing their jobs to foreign immigrants may be the real source of their troubles.

Take the case of Mexican immigrants who primarily take low-wage manual labor jobs in the US. The value of the American dollar to Americans is low. Americans need more money than they have to buy the things they’re used to being able to pay for. The economy in Mexico, however, is still weaker than ours. The quality of life there is lower.

When immigrants come to the United States, they become a part of our economy and, more specifically, our markets. They value the dollar higher than American citizens do, because they are willing to live in lower circumstances and thus do more with fewer dollars. Also, the population has risen as a result of them being here. That’s fewer dollars to go around, which makes them more valuable, and more people who value them higher than before. That also makes the dollar more valuable.

Now, everyone’s money (without making anymore than before) is worth more than it was. The influx of poorer people into this country, then, improves everybody’s lives– even their own. Of course, there are some Americans who are working those same manual labor jobs that the immigrants want. And the Mexican immigrants are willing to do those jobs for less, because they value each dollar more. So, some Americans end up out of work or in competition with immigrants for employment.

It’s that last part that’s a problem. But, immigration doesn’t seem to be the real source of trouble. Why are these Americans so interested in jobs that someone from a poorer country would want in the first place? We already know they can’t afford to live the way they’re expected to on that pay; yet, for some reason, it doesn’t occur to them to look for better jobs. Thanks to Brink Lindsey’s article, we already know that there is plenty of incentive in the market for Americans to further their education and get more advanced jobs if they really want them.

Instead, they demand that the employers be the ones to pay them more than their jobs are really worth. If the employers agree, the price of the products and services they produce go up, making the value of the dollar continue to decline. This would seem to ensure that conditions will never improve.

It looks like immigration could be very healthy for the United States. What needs to change, then, is not wages or immigration policies, but the self-defeating attitude of the American lower class that struggle to keep jobs only people living in worse conditions than them would want, instead of striving to obtain the better jobs that are available to them .

I just came across this article from Cato VP Brink Lindsey, which was published in the Wall Street Journal last summer. Lindsey talks about the misconception that economic inequality is the result of unfettered markets, and he points to a cultural shortfall wherein the vast majority of people living in poverty in the United States are not working full-time and aren’t finishing school.

The wage premium associated with a college degree has jumped to around 70% in recent years from around 30% in 1980; the graduate degree premium has soared to over 100% from 50%. Meanwhile, dropping out of high school now all but guarantees socioeconomic failure.

In part this development is cause for celebration. Rising demand for analytical and interpersonal skills has been driving the change, and surely it is good news that economic signals now so strongly encourage the development of human talent. Yet – and here is the cause for concern – the supply of skilled people is responding sluggishly to the increased demand.

It seems that certain segments of American culture are to blame for more people not simply laying claim to the rewards the market is offering to anyone willing to educate themselves and hold down a job. With all of the artificial impediments to economic growth in this country, it’s unfortunate that the job market is experiencing resistance from the the least likely of places– the jobless.

Which brings us back to the real issue: the human capital gap, and the culture gap that impedes its closure. The most obvious and heartrending cultural deficits are those that produce and perpetuate the inner-city underclass. Consider this arresting fact: While the poverty rate nationwide is 13%, only 3% of adults with full-time, year-round jobs fall below the poverty line. Poverty in America today is thus largely about failing to get and hold a job, any job.

The problem is not lack of opportunity. If it were, the country wouldn’t be a magnet for illegal immigrants. The problem is a lack of elementary self-discipline: failing to stay in school, failing to live within the law, failing to get and stay married to the mother or father of your children. The prevalence of all these pathologies reflects a dysfunctional culture that fails to invest in human capital.

The trouble, of course, is the difficulty in effecting any significant change in social systems, when the change needed is for the people in society to be more proactive in the first place. Lindsey suggests education reform, and I think that’s a good place to start. However, I tend to think that a great deal of American complacency can be linked to a broad relinquishment of choice and civil liberty. The American government is taking nearly half of our means of survival, which limits our ability to do for ourselves, and it is also regulating nearly every aspect of civilized human life. The mere fact that we are not as free as we should be has led us, by and large, to become less active participants in our future.

Reforming education in order to help future generations climb out of this climate of torpor is a step in the right direction, but we may be doomed to a “slave’s mentality” if more sweeping changes aren’t made to the way our government intervenes in our lives.