←back to thread

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

(www.wsj.com)
191 points impish9208 | 1 comments | 02 Sep 25 15:07 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
orochimaaru ◴[02 Sep 25 15:41 UTC] No.45104568[source]▶
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.

replies(5): >>45104793 #>>45104799 #>>45104961 #>>45104979 #>>45105748 #
1. tenacious_tuna ◴[02 Sep 25 16:08 UTC] No.45104979[source]▶
> Isn’t this a bit obvious?

I thought the same thing as I left the church, but it's so ingrained in many people in ways they don't even realize.

Another commenter mentions the "just world fallacy," which I agree drives this sentiment directly: if you work hard, you get good things. If you got bad things, it's because you didn't work hard (enough).

There's lots of feedback loops that perpetuate this: survivorship bias, historic wealth (ye olde boomer-bought-a-house-on-a-single-factory-salary), startup CEOs. I find the description of the American poor who don't see themselves as poor but as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" to be incredibly true.

Additionally, in many cases the people who're the most affected have the least resources to make themselves heard, the classic "rich people don't have the same 24 hours a day as the rest of us."

So, yeah, to a degree it should be obvious to anyone who goes looking, but there's so many sociological effects layered on top of each other that make it counterintuitive to someone for whom the system is working well.