One of the most prized compliments any of my students can get is for someone to say that he or she has a strong work ethic. This description carries more weight than a host of other attributes — more than intelligence, more than strength, more than experience.
A strong work ethic is founded on beliefs that go something like this:
- Everybody needs various goods and services to live.
- These goods and services are generated by work.
- Since we all benefit from having access to these goods and services, we all need to help create them.
In this simplified view, work is simply each of us doing our part — contributing our fair share.
But amidst all the controversies over tax rates, minimum wage and government budgets, we can lose sight of how our work actually creates a healthy community.
When we work, we generate wealth:
- For personal and family use.
- For employers to cover the operating costs of doing business.
- For our community to maintain the infrastructure, conditions and quality of life that make doing business possible.
Anytime we work, we create wealth in all three of these areas. That is why work is so important and why a strong work ethic is so valuable. Work is the power that literally turns the gears of our society.
A common mistake is to assume that all the wealth we produce at our various jobs belongs in the first category — personal and family use — and is rightfully ours to spend as we see fit. Of course we need income to live, but how long would an employer stay in business if he or she had to rely on voluntary donations to cover the costs of production or to pay the rent on their facilities?
And it is just as silly to expect our community to rely on the charitable whims of individuals to cover the cost of repairing a bridge, treating our wastewater, providing courts of law or any number of other things that none of us can do on our own.
I really like the way Abraham Lincoln described this positive view of government of, by and for the people:
“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”
Lincoln went on to provide examples of these things that require us to pool our efforts and resources: “public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanages, estates of the deceased and the machinery of government itself.”
This is a valuable lesson we need to be teaching our children — when we work, we create the wealth each of us needs to feed our families and put a roof over our heads, but also the wealth our businesses and organizations need to operate, and the wealth our community needs to do those things that make a quality life possible for us all.
In a nutshell, we do not work for ourselves alone. We belong to something bigger than ourselves, and we need everyone to do their part. When looked at this way, having a strong work ethic is simply being a good citizen, and something everyone can do according to their ability. When we work, we can take pride that our efforts are making a difference that extends far beyond our own personal bank accounts.
Let’s develop this kind of work ethic in our children and our community as well, a work ethic that looks at the big picture beyond just our individual incomes. And let’s do whatever we have to do to provide the opportunities for all to participate.
Jim Strickland is a resident of Marysville.
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