Anyone raised in a country so enamored of money will be easy enough to convince that remunerative work is the real, true, important kind of work, that non-remunerative work is for flunkies and pushovers. This value hierarchy is ham-fisted and foolish, of course, and few people would agree to it so formulated. A good human life contains multitudes – care and competition, sensitive nurture and hard-nosed realism, children and money, private and public. We all know this, of course.  

But if we are forced to choose, our culture presents us with pretty clear ideas about which way we should go.