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The whole idea that you MUST WORK came from religious fanaticism that said if you weren't being productive, then you were prone to sin. "Idle hands are the devils playground". This "work ethic" became embedded in our mindset as a Truth.
Then you add in the industrial revolution, where wealthy Captains of Industry desperately needed cheap, easy labor. and our entire society turns towards churning out that labor, and ostracizing anyone who's not participating in that labor.
Mix in the whole "rugged individualism" thing, spice it with Randian "I've got mine, fuck you", and you've got a stew of dysfunction that thinks that people are miserable without paid employment, and that being "dependent" is a deep moral failing.
You get a society that not only structurally enforces poverty, but actively refuses to acknowledge systemic factors that contribute to poverty. You get people who are utterly blind to how we're all "dependent", and none of us survive in a vacuum of our own 'self made' success.
You get an cultural mindset that believes that *creating a baseline standard of living* and making social support systems that maintain that baseline is immoral and wrong because someone might be *lazy*, and not engage in selling themselves for labor.
If *anything* is immoral and wrong, it's the constant reinforcement of human worth and value being tied to laboring for others. It's the insistence that human beings will suffer emotionally and physically if they aren't in paid employment.
