Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

Naturally it was always a false hope. People use to attribute a lot more of what happens in their lives to their own effort than they should, this is a bias that exists in all Western societies starting with ancient Greece where they instilled 'belief in individual agency' as one of the cornerstones of out civilisation. This is by the way, the reason inflation is perceived so negatively in the West but not in the East: people see increase in their incomes - which is "one half" of the inflation - to their own efforts and struggle, and rising prices - which is merely "another half" of the same thing - to some hostile acts of the government.

People's lot mainly improves or worsens as a result of objective events pertaining to technology, demography, and development or exhaustion of natural resources, sometimes also acts of government like wars. Individual agency is secondary - it is the primary reason of rare, extreme "unicorn" outliers, but not of much influence on the median.

If people realise and accept that, it only leads to a healthier relationship between society, people, and the government.

I wouldn't need to worry about chasing raises if inflation didn't exist.

I think the correlation between good work and payoff genuinely has dropped off. This kind of makes sense. As systems get more complex/complicated, it becomes easier to hide corruption, and harder to identify positive contributions with respect to the system. This goes for society as a whole as well as companies, organizations, communities, etc.

As corruption becomes more and more profitable, culture also switches to become more tolerant of it, or even to expect it.

Isn't it also the effort of entire society to compress the pay scale with exactly that effect? And societies that are furthest on that path (Nordic ones) are used as example to follow (and indeed appear quite comfortable and nice).

But the value of your labor would increase as your expertise did, surely?

Even without corruption, "hard work" doesn't correlate to success. I do good work with a specialized skillset, but I don't work particularly hard.

People who replace roofs on houses work very very hard and make much less money than I do, and those income levels aren't likely to change too much throughout our lives.

Income is generally much more correlated to the market value of your skills and experience than with effort, and gaining those skills and experiences has a lot to do with your background and ability to do things like attend college, work on relevant side projects / hobbies, take low pay / unpaid internships, etc.

Ability to invest capital into things like business ownership, investment, real estate, etc. is another factor.

As cost of living increases relative to wages, that leaves less room for savings to pull yourself up from being a wage worker to an owner or investor.

Individual agency is important but I feel that people perceive it in a very simple way, "I work" => "I live as I want".

I think a major difference between East Europe and West Europe (can't talk generally about East/West) is that people in East Europe were trained/educated/forced/convinced that they can't change anything after 1950 (up to recently). This lead to most not take any responsibility, and to some profiting hugely (some hard working, some sociopaths). In West Europe there was always more struggle at multiple levels.

People's status improve mostly from accumulated individual actions. But someone still has to do the actions. That's why "propaganda" (convincing your own population that X is required) is so important because otherwise X will not happen.

Having a population that "accepts" things are "external" is perfect for the rulers, but no much for the others. Having a population that "struggles" and accepts it can't get everything it imagines (even if they try) seems much healthier.

What does this have to do with my comment of inflation? You are actively working to undermine my labor and cast me aside via your company anyway. Very cool!

Wait, like, are you speaking hypothetically or are you feeling somehow I've personally done something to you? I'm very confused.