US culture based on Protestant ethics. European roots were later changed by various world wars to be more supportive of welfare whereas US was largely unaffected by those wars so the ethics lived on.
Professor Elizabeth Anderson notes:
“You know,” she says, “America was so dominantly Protestant for such a long time. We have a substantial number of Catholics but the culture was really shaped by Protestants – in term of their total cultural domination of the United States at its founding, and really continuing.”
One aspect of this, she highlights, is the adoption of a Protestant work ethic as a core value in society. This has a positive side – in honouring human labour – but it also has a negative side.
“There is a profound suspicion of anyone who is poor, and a consequent raising to the highest priority imposing incredibly humiliating, harsh conditions on access to welfare benefits on the assumption you’re some kind of grifter, or you’re trying to cheat the system.
“There is no appreciation for the existence of structural poverty, poverty that is not the fault of your own but because the economy maybe is in recession or, in a notorious Irish case, the potato crop fails.”
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