Who the hell dug up this dead old thread???
I think Ty makes a good point. I doubt he’s missed the fact that it’s a figure of speech, but one has to wonder why sometimes figures of speech are phrased the way they are. To call the practice of working in exchanging for money “earning a living” certainly puts a somewhat biased spin on it, making it out to seem like one has an obligation to work in order to have the right to live. But I also question what “work” is supposed to entail here. I think Ty makes a good point if it were that by “work” one means “working for the man,” but if by “work” we mean getting off your ass and putting some effort into some form of physical labor, then I’d say all animals need to “earn a living” in order to eat, stay sheltered, fend for themselves, etc. If they expect to survive by just sitting there waiting for their resources to come to them and for predators to keep away and respect their right to live and not be harmed, then they have another thing coming (which isn’t to say it would be necessarily unethical of them, but stupid). On the other hand, I think “earning a living” typically means “getting a job”–as opposed to living in the wild and hunting for food and building your own shelter, etc.–but even here I question whether the biases of this slang expression are unwarranted, for it seems to me that we just don’t live in a world anymore where living off the land as the animals do is much of an option anymore, and society with its modern economic structures is pretty much the new environment; “earning a living” in that case might just connote nothing more than the fact that getting a job is just how one lives now a days, and that it would be stupid (but not necessarily unethical) for one to sit on his ass and wait for the money to pour in all by itself. Knowing Ty, however, he does not subscribe to this interpretation.