"The study of ethics becomes most compelling when it addresses the basic concerns of people who struggle, day by day, to live their lives with dignity...Millions of people work full time, but still do not earn enough to avoid poverty and the grim prospects beckoned by a minimum wage...People die at work and they die because of work," writes Estey. Estey proposes a labor ethic that emphasizes the protest in Protestantism. The purpose of this ethic is to interrupt the drudgery of the Protestant work ethic, which Estey asserts is the dominant cultural ideal in the U.S. Protestantism must not be about capitulation to capitalism, and a Protestant ethic that works must be one that questions and confronts authority in order to undo the newest and oldest forms of dehumanization – as they pertain to workers, labor issues, and conditions in the workplace.