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

I was always curious, why would anyone believe that hard work leads to economic gains in the first place? That's like saying "flapping your hands very fast leads to building a house". Nothing about working hard has anything to do with economic gains. This has always felt to me like magical thinking: if I check certain boxes, I'm automatically entitled to "hard work funds" allocated to me. Like anything in capitalist market, the only thing that matters is what people want to pay for, and doing that for them. It's not even that important how "hard" you "work" doing it, but yes, the more you do of what people want, the more you'll probably get paid for it.

Part of the issue is that when you're young, the school really imposes lots of schoolwork on you, that you can't ignore. It's like school takes over your time, but none of the liability for whether the time will be well-spent. And at this point you don't have good foresight to know the difference.

The more general wisdom I think that should be learned early in life: you always make your own path. Schools are tools for getting there, but the buck stops with you. If you decide to accept a "pre-made path" given to you by a school, you still have to be the one researching whether it makes sense and signing off on it. Just like when you work with doctors, financial advisors, or other contractors, you have to be the project manager of your life's project. Cannot delegate this part. Not easy to learn early unfortunately, but at least start with the understanding that the only thing that matters for economic gains is doing what people want to pay for.