One of Mike Rowe’s readers recently posted a comment saying he was tired of Mike’s harping about the “work ethic.” He equated that to calling poor people lazy, which is a liberal talking point but patently falsely applied to Mike. The reader asserted that poor people can’t find jobs because they didn’t have parents to teach them a work ethic, and Mike should be helping them develop one.

Webster says laziness is “a disinclination to exertion.” The lack of a work ethic is laziness. Whether an individual’s disinclination is rooted in ignorance or common indolence is irrelevant: The individual is lazy and, ironically, Mike’s reader essentially called people without jobs lazy. Developing a more universal work ethic doesn’t take billions of taxpayer dollars being shoveled to “work ethic awareness,” nonprofits and legions of “work ethic counselors.” A work ethic doesn’t require development. It requires acceptance. It isn’t about education. It’s about an attitude change and that takes an epiphany not a process.

Our half century war on poverty has produced an explosion of generational poverty, destroyed the concept of family, and spawned an industry of government-funded awareness mongers and poverty advocates who spend their days making ever more absurd and infuriating excuses for indolence. We don’t need more poverty profiteers. We need good people to stand up and speak up about what’s expected of those who want to be respected.

Surely many able-bodied and able-minded poor people are poor because they lack the skills to get a higher paying job, because family obligations prevent them from working full time, or because they cannot or will not relocate to where the better jobs are. That said, it’s also the case that there are many, mostly young, non-workers who don’t accept that they should have to get up and go to work doing something that isn’t “fun,” day in and day out, for a paycheck that doesn’t fund a Kardashian lifestyle. After all, that’s just not fay-air! These are the folks who need a reality induced epiphany.

Be one of those who say nobody gets a free ride. Whether you’d prefer to cite Lenin or Thessalonians, the admonition that “He who does not work, neither shall he eat” is a good start. My son tells about interviewing an applicant for what’s called a “code pounder” in his industry. The interview went well until the candidate had just one final thing: “We need to negotiate this salary in light of my experience and education.” My son apologized: Some misunderstanding had put the candidate in the wrong interview. This job was worth the salary offered and if the candidate wanted more pay, he needed to be in a different interview. Be clear that the individual’s needs and wants are not an employer’s obligations and most assuredly not the government’s.

It needs saying that if you bust your butt for your employer today, your reward is the day’s pay and perhaps the opportunity to do it again tomorrow. Individuals need to understand it’s their responsibility to develop and maintain marketable skills and take those skills to employers, wherever they are. Nobody will knock on their door with a job offer and the training needed. Job seekers must understand the minimum expectation is that they show up every day, work the entire day, and then go home and manage their affairs to live on what their job pays. If those are beyond their capabilities or sensibilities, they’re not yet an adult and there is a time limit on how long the rest of us are going to wait for them to grow up. Especially tell people who need to hear it, that listening to charlatans and professional excuse makers will make them losers. Contrary to their pandering, the harder we work, the luckier we get!

Speaking truths may cause some hurt feelings and feigned offense. Know that the trolls, losers, charlatans, and poverty pimps will attack and denounce the message and the messengers with rabid intensity. Know also that however they phrase their screed, their fury proves their fear that the truth will eliminate their make-believe jobs. Remember Bonhoeffer’s admonition: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” That was a different time, a different place, and different circumstances but evil persists and thrives yet when good people remain silent.

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Another View, a Maine Press Association award-winning column, is written on a rotating basis by a member of a group of Mid-coast citizens that meet to discuss issues they think are of public interest.