Complicated question. Certainly no small part of it is that our public discourse has been so powerfully but subtly shaped by a group of people with very narrow interests: increasing wealth at the top end of the income spectrum. It's been very helpful to them to feed Americans a lot of hot air about the importance of constant growth, trickle-down economics, credit as a leveraging tool, bootstrapping, etc while restructuring our economic system around finance and globalization, driving away jobs. All this feeds into a national mythos of individualism which is a longstanding strain in American thought.

But I wouldn't rush to hold Europe up as an example, not that I don't want health care and six weeks of vacation. The nations of Europe are much smaller and more homogenous than we are, they have different cultural histories that are less about individual enterprise and more about collectivist systems, they restrict immigration much more severely, and don't have the degree of international aid and credit responsibilities we do, not to mention the military infrastructure we maintain across the globe. Then, too, look what happened yesterday in Britain and what's happening in France. Those systems are not without problems.

Why can't we just copy what works?
This is the principle the modern music recording industry is based on and look how well that's turned out.

Because work is hard?

why aren't we embracing the virtues of work?
Because most work in the US has no redeeming virtue? Because workers aren't valued in the US and are looked upon as a cost that must be minimized? Who wants to embrace a system like that?

This is the principle the modern music recording industry is based on and look how well that's turned out.

Whut? They persist the legacy system that works, not the current system working elsewhere

Coincidentally, I just heard a couple of students in the hall saying they would have it made if they could get on at Mercedes, where the starting salary is nearly $60K/yr.

Anecdotally, I don't see an aversion to work among my students here at the community college. By and large they're here because they want to work.

As Thorzdad says, how can we get a culture that embraces workers?

Kill and eat the idle rich.

In the article toward the end, it says the US must "pay its way". I'm not entirely sure what it means in that context, but I've been thinking for a long time about: what happens after quality of life (loosely defined as owning a home, a car, having a full time job & health insurance) is achieved for a large number of people?

Is the object of achieving that quality of life to then just sit around and watch TV?

Further, and maybe more directly related to the "pay its way" comment, if we shipped all manuf jobs overseas, what exactly do we produce that anyone wants to buy?