In normal times, government is all about building jobs and boosting the economy. These are not normal times:

What these seemingly disparate stories have in common is a reckless, misanthropic contempt for the very foundation of modern society — the sense of purpose, meaning and community that comes with work.

Jobs are how people get food, shelter and health care. Work is the main thing most people do when they’re not sleeping. But from what has been happening of late around here, you’d think work was mere frippery, an unnecessary relic of a bygone era when people created things together, using their hands, bodies and minds.

Our elected and unelected leaders seem to view work as part of an outdated, misguided worldview. No, the people in charge say, we must embrace a future in which people are mostly bystanders, sidelined by ever-more-dominant machines, which will somehow provide for us while we direct our robots to prepare our cheeseburgers and entertain us till death, which our tech overlords will miraculously avoid through new life-extension technologies.

Social Security — born when a very different kind of president believed that a nation rich in natural resources and abuzz with innovation ought to provide basic support for its oldest and most infirm citizens — is now being kneecapped by a president who cavalierly toys with the very people who make up a vital chunk of his political base.

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