In progress/work ethic obsession

About

Conservatrolls often seem obsessed with the idea that people must work, by which they usually mean people must be employed, in order to be worth anything – and thus argue against liberal policies that offer support to the unemployed or give people more choice in whether or not to be employed, painting the supporters of such policies as having "entitlement".

Even if the premise were true, it's primarily a soldier argument for the Republican agenda, as they also tend to support Republican policies that put people out of work.

Examples

mass media

• 2014-02-05 Fox News: Happening Now (host: Jon Scott) (video): summarized here as claiming that the Obama Administration was trying to "sell this as somehow a good thing." Scott went on to ask guest Douglas Holtz-Eakin "can you see in any way that this is a good thing if two million fewer Americans are working in a few years?"
• 2014-02-05 Fox News: Fox & Friends (Stuart Varney) (video): summarized here as claiming that the reduction in workers' hours was "a complete reversal of the American work ethic" and that the law has "shifted the whole concept of work."

social media

• 2015-01-09 Jeffrey Spangler, comment in response to the idea that free education is a good thing: "maybe some of us dumb asses still believe in working for what we have and don't have an entitlement mentally."