The above headline is an arguable point that I will not chime in on (for a lack of caring - I’m Canadian, I have nothing to defend here). However, Jim Windolf has an opinion in Vanity Fair on the theme of America and laziness. Read the article ‘Lazy-Ass Nation” in full.

But the same rough-and-ready spirit that helped the pioneering settlers to carve new hometowns out of an untamed and gnat-infested land began applying itself to less pressing matters starting around 1850, as the necessary invention gave way to the comic innovation. In 1863, James Plimpton of Medford, Massachusetts, won a patent for roller skates. Why walk when you can glide? Even as the Civil War raged, Plimpton’s invention ushered in one of the first consumer-culture crazes. In 1896, James Boyle of Spokane, Washington, patented the “saluting device.” Tucked inside a man’s hat, this gizmo performed the annoying job of hat tipping so you didn’t have to. In 1883, Charles Stillwell of Philadelphia invented a machine to produce the brown paper bag—or, as he called it, “the Self-Opening Sack, the first bag to stand upright by itself.” Without Stillwell’s invention, the self-service supermarket, created in 1916 by Clarence Saunders, of Piggly Wiggly fame, might not have amounted to much. The sometimes startling transition from a class of invention that solved serious problems to the type that made life a little more convenient was already apparent with the 1891 creation of the escalator by Kansas-born patent holder Jesse W. Reno: those reaching the top of this “inclined conveyor belt” were offered brandy to help them get over the shock of rising 45 feet above ground level.