Elf Sternberg

One of the great advantages of starting anew in the colonies was that there was less of an entrenched order of things here than there was there.

I wonder if the work-refusers and work-avoiders aren't the descendants of lifelong servants, for whom a life of service was actually a step up from poverty & the fields.
For people in those circumstances/that class, it would make sense that work could not seem worthwhile, nor anything but soul-grinding and urgently in need of avoidance.
Especially if schools were a process of training such people for such jobs.

It seems to me that a lot of people even in the U.S. see such jobs as the only kind available, but imagine themselves as one day winning a lottery or otherwise getting ahead in life to the point of not having to do that kind of work, so acquiesce to the system based on that hope (a hope that seems absent in older people here, btw.)

I think that there is a large class of UKers who don't even think they have hope of anything better when they're young, and give up before starting the game. I'm afraid that what the USers in that position do is join the military.