One of the most remarkable facts of the American system is that a person with barely any formal education (let’s say only a high school degree) can thrive in this culture and actually save enough wealth to pass on to his children. You have to have lived in other countries to realize how powerful that fact truly is.
The economic freedoms in this country allows someone with a creative or entrepreneurial mind to succeed in his sphere. If that is coupled with healthy savings and a basic view of wealth, that individual has a great possibility of making a decent salary while still being home for dinner at 6.
The entire premise, of course, entails that such individual follows the ethic of the ant. The ant knows his task and he is not hindered by supposed societal oppositions to his vocational aspirations. He establishes his vision early on and moves with intentionality.
The sluggard, on the other hand, views work as a necessary evil. He wakes up only to fulfill his duties, not to convert his duties into offerings of thanks to God. The sluggard quickly succumbs to leftists ideologies which promise equal share in profit and property. American universities are filled with sluggards applying for humanity classes which condemn business owners (often that ambitious young person with no college degree) taught by teachers who grew up resenting the ants among them. But philosophies of resentment is what the sluggard wants. He can get a degree and feel supported by a group of tenured professors who encourage his resentment towards the successful.
It’s indeed the great sign of the American experiment that a high-school graduate develops a sense of self-worth, respectfully views the process of labor, makes a fruitful living, treasures the ant, while the university grad is left with 20 years of loans with a degree in a limited market. But at least, he resents the bourgeois with great stamina; at least he was taught that success is a sign of oppression; at least he can take pride in reading Engels.
