MY COUSIN COULD never speak about his addiction without speaking about the lack of meaning in his life. His last text to me was three days before he overdosed on April 9, 2018: “I believe in God a hundred percent. I love him and he does me right. We have our own relationship. But he didn’t give me that compass.”
His death from opiates illustrates a broader trend of early deaths among working-class Americans brought on by hopelessness, joblessness, and pain.
Mikey and I grew up together in a family of scallopers in Massachusetts, where fishing is as much a lifestyle as it is a career. As a child, Mikey taught me to tie nautical knots in my shoelaces. As a teenager, he sent videos of scallop-shucking races between him and my other cousins. For our family, work and meaning weave together like a tapestry and it’s impossible to untangle one from the other. But as a young adult, Mikey’s opportunities dried up and he, like many others, struggled to keep a job. Without it, he lost his sense of direction.
Scalloping is a tough way to make a living. Like so many industries in which people make a living by their hands, it’s facing decline, especially among smaller operators. And where the opportunities decline, despair follows. It’s one explanation for what happened to Mikey.
His death from opiates illustrates a broader trend of early deaths among working-class Americans brought on by hopelessness, joblessness, and pain—a trend that Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have eloquently termed “deaths of despair.” The opioid crisis is one manifestation of that loss of hope stemming from declining work opportunities.
Research shows unemployment negatively impacts self-esteem. It also has a large negative effect on individuals’ subjective well-being. The unemployed are twice as likely to use illegal drugs than full-time workers. On average, as the unemployment rate increases by one percentage point in a given county, the opioid death rate in that same county increases by 3.6 percent. Emergency room visits increase by 7 percent.
I’d wager these unemployment effects on self-esteem hold true for most cultures. But the link between one’s occupation and higher values like purpose, self-worth, and virtue is particularly strong amongst Americans. Consider this experiment, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and covered by The New York Times:
“In the study, American and Canadian college students were asked to solve word puzzles involving anagrams. But first, some were subtly exposed to (or ‘primed’ with) salvation-related words like ‘heaven’ and ‘redeem,’ while others were exposed to neutral words. The researchers found that the Americans—but not the Canadians—solved more anagrams with salvation on the mind. They worked harder.”
Americans draw a unique connection between work and virtue. The study shows that some aspects of our Puritan founding have persisted to today. You might recall the Puritan work ethic from your school history classes: the idea that work in and of itself is pious. It’s the idea that work is not just a job, but a calling. The French diplomat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville once said, “I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores.” He wasn’t wrong. Ask any American what in their life gives them the most meaning, and they will almost certainly answer family and work. And not necessarily in that order.
Joblessness isn’t only about not being able to buy a new television or lacking the funds to renovate one’s home. What is at stake is our pursuit of happiness.
Assuming there is this tie between work and self-esteem and between work and our feelings of virtue, it should be no surprise that more than just jobs are at stake when unemployment rises. Joblessness isn’t only about not being able to buy a new television or lacking the funds to renovate one’s home. What is at stake is our pursuit of happiness.
Protecting our pursuit of happiness is one of the most fundamental objectives our founders entrusted to our government, which is why it is so bizarre that our government is, in fact, one of the major players threatening this happiness.
On the border of Ohio and Kentucky, PLF client Phillip Truesdell and his family lost their jobs when a local power plant shut down. He started a new medical transport business to keep his children from having to move out-of-state for work. But Kentucky’s “Competitor’s Veto” laws require entrepreneurs to get approval from existing providers for permission to operate. Unsurprisingly, they said no.
In New England, my native home, the Obama administration abused the Antiquities Act to declare a 5,000-square-mile swath of the ocean a national monument. This kept fishermen from operating in areas long used for commercial fishing. My family has dubbed this act, along with the government’s ever-tightening regulatory grip on their industry, evidence of the “war on fishing.”
In California, another PLF client, Spencer Grant, is the only caregiver for his wife who suffers from multiple medical conditions, one of which causes her neck muscles to painfully and involuntarily contract. But California recently passed a new state law drastically limiting job opportunities for freelancers, like Spencer, who rely on the flexibility of freelancing to take care of ill loved ones.
These are just a few examples of a much more pervasive problem. In any direction you turn, the government is creating obstacles to job creation, and our nation’s elites have not honestly addressed this tumor head-on. “Learn to code,” the journalists say. “Move to a city,” the economists say. “Work…but only in the industries and in the manner we deem appropriate,” the government says.
The solution is so simple, only a career bureaucrat could miss it: Get the government out of the way.
These solutions require separating people from their families to restart their careers on the bottom rung of a new industry or wriggling through tight regulations, which may be impossible. Communities are infected with a sickness called hopelessness and the government is allowing this sickness to take hold. When a person is sick, you don’t separate them from the source of their strength, like family and community. When a person needs hope, you don’t deprive them of their dignity by denying them their calling.
I can’t say that Mikey would still be alive if only we lived in a freer country or if only this or that regulation was lifted. But every day, out-of-touch elites far removed from the declining communities they rule over are continuing to rob the Mikeys of their inner compasses.
The solution is so simple, only a career bureaucrat could miss it: Get the government out of the way.
This is Pacific Legal Foundation’s approach. Limit the government to its promise to protect our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Let us work.
A hard-working spirit is embedded deeply within the American psyche. If we allow people who are desperate to believe in themselves the chance to do so, we may see an end to the crises poisoning the American working class. The only cure for hopelessness is hope. A compass is the only fix for the lost.
