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

Isn’t this a bit obvious? I mean I’ve known this since I started working in 1997. The first job you have generally shatters this illusion that job security and economic gains are tied to “hard work”.

In the sense hard work is needed but only if you see if adding to what you consider a quality of life (which could be economic gain, generational wealth, bragging rights to a promotion, etc.). Each person has their criteria.

If you work in corporate America, hard work isn’t going to save you from layoffs or get you a bigger bonus unless that work is tied to making someone high up in your reporting chain look really good.

As you say, it's obvious to pretty much anyone who's ever worked a day in their life but, at the same time, culturally we pretend otherwise. Guys like Musk or Bloomberg talk about working 90 hour weeks and sleeping under their desks. We still want the cultural myth of hard work = success, whatever the reality is, because this allows those who've achieved economic gain to feel better about themselves.