"...a good work ethic, and work enough to go around"

In his blog, Ace of Spades gives an excellent analysis of employment-related issues.

...It's not just about money, either: Conservatives have long believed that there is a strong correlation between industriousness and the other virtues and social good. Higher industriousness -- a good work ethic, and work enough to go around -- leads, nigh inexorably, to a host of social goods, such as increased orderliness, increased charity, increased social trust in strangers, as well as great gains in marriage, marital stability, and childbirth.

And what happens to a people who do not have enough work? Or who do not feel that the benefits from working are adequate? They develop an ethic of anti-industriousness, which leads to all the common social woes: dependency, drug abuse, out-of-wedlock childbirth, low marriage rates and low marital stability.

...It amuses me that people would call the immigration-restrictivist position "racist." Because, I have to ask, if you don't explain the high rates of drug abuse, out-of-wedlock births, etc., in the inner city minority populations as being a consequence of the anti-industriousness ethic (itself caused by low opportunities for gainful work), then how would you explain it?

It seems to me you'd have no other choice but to explain it by a series of actually racist claims about the low moral and ethical character about populations who are failing to thrive in America.

I don't believe that; I think industriousness and the other moral virtues are strongly correlated, and decline in industriousness rapidly leads to a decline in most of the rest of the virtues.

And when people don't believe in the benefits of industriousness, industriousness declines. They become cynical about working and cynical about the American way in general, and that leads to an anti-industriousness ethic and a self-destructive counter-culture which scorns American idealism about prosperity.

And I don't think whites have any special resistance to this effect.

And of course, American blacks and Latinos are the most harmed by competition from cheaper (often illegal) foreign workers.

Read more here.