David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote: “A lot of us pundits said President Donald Trump should run a positive campaign bragging about all the economic growth. But Trump ran another American carnage campaign. That’s because American life still feels like carnage to many.” (“What the working class is still trying to tell us,” The Seattle Times, 11 November 2018)

We have, Brooks said, fixated on economic growth and not on the ability of our citizens to produce.

This even applies, he wrote, to our programs for the poor. Welfare programs “have focused on consumption—giving money to the poor so they can consume more.”

He suggested, often quoting from a book by Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker, that we should stress a multiple approach to education. We should be as interested in apprenticeship programs as in college preparatory courses, for example.

Most of us have a strong need to feel we are of worth, that we can contribute something to society. Indeed some of the drug culture among youth may stem from a sense of uselessness and lack of purpose.

Producing? Serving? Work as valuable? We could do worse.