The industrial revolution in America was driven by a bourgeois Protestant ethic that celebrated work and frowned on self-indulgence.

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The best-known was devised by Max Weber, a father of modern sociology, who drew a connection between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.

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But I still believe a crucial foundation of the American dream is that unfashionable belief called the Protestant work ethic.

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Some speculate that Americans, being the cultural heirs of the industrious Puritan settlers, are still gripped by a Protestant work ethic.

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The last time I checked this was the core of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic that this country was founded upon.

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But these states have a Protestant work ethic: we'll help you find a job, they say, but you must work if you can.

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Nor is it the willingness to go onto part-time working to preserve jobs in the downturn, the Protestant work ethic, the large manufacturing sector or any of the other things that people are musing about.

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He ponders the origins of the Protestant work ethic, under which, as he tells it, work became an end in itself, and contrasts this with the later utilitarian emphasis on the fruits of labour consumption and wealth.

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The Pew study found that the new Asian immigrants identify themselves, surprisingly, as 22% Protestant and 19% Catholic, but whatever their religion, most of them have in spades what Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic.

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