This article originally appeared in The Detroit News December 10, 2024.
The loneliness problem in America is a perplexing one. The U.S. Surgeon General warned last year that the country faces an “epidemic” of loneliness, with serious health issues that accompany isolation. The surgeon general’s recommendations for fixing loneliness are massive, costly and uncertain, as you may have read in my column last week. However, I have found that one strategy could be used by most people: good old-fashioned work.
David Bahnsen is one of the country’s top financial advisors and a frequent national TV commentator on finance, markets and policy. His book “Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life” addresses the value of work in society.
Bahnsen opens his book by observing that “many people are alienated, unhappy and estranged from traditional sources of contentment.” He documents significant, negative trends: Depression levels are up since the COVID-19 pandemic; the suicide rate has increased 30% in 20 years; drug overdoses have taken nearly one million lives since 2000; and 15 million Americans struggle with alcohol abuse.
Bahnsen notes the decline of social connection: The average person spends more time alone each year. In a single decade the time one spends with friends has dropped 37%, and 12% of Americans say they have “no close friends.”
He says work represents a powerful solution. We’re not talking about workaholism, where one prioritizes work to the detriment of other obligations. Nor is it advisable to use work to mask or ignore problems in one’s life. And of course, it is possible to work and still be lonely. Bahnsen recommends a mindset about the value of work. “The purpose, activity and usefulness it reinforces,” he writes, “may be the best prescriptive remedy against the insidious alienation we face today.”
Bahnsen suggests that loneliness is not merely the lack of a friend or spouse, but the lack of purpose. Meaningful work can fill such a deficit.
Why is that? Work builds character. It teaches a young person the value of effort and of a dollar. Work enables us to take care of our loved ones. It allows us to pursue interests and support the causes we care about. Work confers dignity and lifts people up. As Congressman Jason Smith, R-Mo., has said, “A job is the best anti-poverty program that exists.”
Americans love work. Ask the next three people you see if they remember their first job. I predict they will grin with nostalgia and tell you a story.
Mike Rowe’s TV show “Dirty Jobs” was popular because we love and respect hard work. And consider the most popular television shows of all time; many are about work or are in a work setting: “M*A*S*H,” “ER,” “Mad Men” and “The Office.”
Nicholas Eberstadt has been writing about a related problem. His 2016 book “Men Without Work” described a quiet, decades-long trend of men choosing to leave the workforce. In 2015, he wrote, the work rate for American males ages 25 to 54 was lower than in 1940, at the end of the Great Depression. This quiet flight has profound implications for families, communities and the social safety net.
Policymakers in Michigan can respond in several ways. First, they can eliminate pointless hurdles that keep people from getting a job. Occupational licensing rules require people to pay fees and incur time-consuming training in order to paint, lay masonry or cut hair. Michigan should continue eliminating these requirements. Second, policymakers should drop the idea of restricting independent contractor work, where people work part- or full-time in the gig economy.
Meaningful work can help address the complex problem of loneliness.
Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.
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