My fieldwork uncovered the cultural frames that workers used to calculate value in their jobs—and by extension to frame and manage the risks they perceived they faced. Their acceptance and management of risk served capitalist functions by supporting the growth of companies and industries. In effect, their individual-level, culturally informed explanations that my respondents offered for how people get ahead, why work is meaningful, and how to navigate a career in this field masked the social or collective forces at play within their jobs. This does not bode well for creating a sense of old-fashioned solidarity among workers facing increased uncertainty. To echo the words of one of my unemployed respondents after the crash, when a job is thought of as an investment—and not as a right, an obligation, or an earned position—losing a job can seem like “easy come, easy go.” A sense of moral outrage or indignation at being part of an economic arrangement that devalues work and views, in Louis Uchitelle’s terms, workers as “disposable” is missing when people use these investment frames to understand their choices.25