I ask because earlier this month the Congressional Budget Office released a report on the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — noting that it is likely to shrink the workforce by the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs by 2024. Conservatives howled that this proves the law is a job-killer, but — surprise, surprise — it’s actually a little more complicated than that.

As The New York Times reported, “With the expansion of insurance coverage, the budget office predicted, more people will choose not to work, and others will choose to work fewer hours than they might have otherwise to obtain employer-provided insurance.”

Wage slaves, in other words, may seek to throw off the yoke.

This set off the usual round of hand-wringing over the supposed demise of the Protestant work ethic. The ACA will subsidize sloth, goes this argument. That Obamacare may allow families to decide how they will work or if they will work “will be emblazoned on the tombstone of liberalism,” predicted conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer.

And if America was awash in good jobs but people preferred to slack, I might agree with him.

But you’ll notice we’re not awash in good jobs. We may never be awash in them again.

Wal-Mart is the country’s biggest employer. The second-biggest is a temp agency, Kelly Services. To this, the workforce is supposed to aspire?

If the Protestant work ethic is dying, might it be because there’s less and less for people to work for?

What sort of future does the modern American wage slave have to look forward to? Rising wages and better benefits? Or will they continue to lose ground? After all, there’s a huge glut of available labor out there, and that can only force wages down. The only “product” produced by the majority of people, their labor, has fallen in value.

And yet, these devalued human beings are supposed to see some sort of nobility in low-wage work and dead-end jobs? How can we expect — and how can we demand — that anyone be satisfied with that?

If the Protestant work ethic is dying, let’s place the blame where it belongs: not with Obamacare, but with an economy that needs American workers less, and thus can pay them less. Because working when there seems to be less and less to work for looks a lot like servitude. And we shouldn’t be surprised if the people stuck in that dead end are indeed interested in a way out.