I think the thing you are missing, and that many of the articles miss, is that hard work is necessary but not sufficient condition for great success. You need BOTH to achieve great success. The disillusionment felt in current society comes from increasing wealth disparity making it obvious that hard work alone is NOT enough. You either need to be incredibly lucky to cross the chasm of inequality, or you need the luck to be born into a position where you already don't need to.
It also doesn't help that what has constituted "hard work" to achieve "success" has also shifted over the decades.
It used to be that with a single income family with a job that you "worked hard at", i.e. 9-5 and coming home to your wife and kids, that you had enough money to be able to afford the mortgage on a house.
Now with a single income family earning minimum wage you are in poverty, and cannot afford an apartment, much less a house. Millennials are not purchasing homes and are delaying getting married and having kids because of it. College educated jobs now pay less than what adjusted minimum wage jobs used to pay. So now you need to work two jobs to get ahead and give up family life or sleep, or figure out a "side hustle" to make more than your salary.
The generational wealth gap is as large as it has ever been.
So no, "working hard" is no longer enough to be "successful" in the usual sense of the American Dream of owning your own home. You need to "get lucky" and be in the right place at the right time to cross that divide. The idea that hard work is not enough is a symptom of a larger systemic disease of wealth inequality in this country, not the cause of the larger disease.
I think the thing you are missing, and that many of the articles miss, is that hard work is necessary but not sufficient condition for great success. You need BOTH to achieve great success. The disillusionment felt in current society comes from increasing wealth disparity making it obvious that hard work alone is NOT enough. You either need to be incredibly lucky to cross the chasm of inequality, or you need the luck to be born into a position where you already don't need to.
It also doesn't help that what has constituted "hard work" to achieve "success" has also shifted over the decades.
It used to be that with a single income family with a job that you "worked hard at", i.e. 9-5 and coming home to your wife and kids, that you had enough money to be able to afford the mortgage on a house.
Now with a single income family earning minimum wage you are in poverty, and cannot afford an apartment, much less a house. Millennials are not purchasing homes and are delaying getting married and having kids because of it. College educated jobs now pay less than what adjusted minimum wage jobs used to pay. So now you need to work two jobs to get ahead and give up family life or sleep, or figure out a "side hustle" to make more than your salary.
The generational wealth gap is as large as it has ever been.
So no, "working hard" is no longer enough to be "successful" in the usual sense of the American Dream of owning your own home. You need to "get lucky" and be in the right place at the right time to cross that divide. The idea that hard work is not enough is a symptom of a larger systemic disease of wealth inequality in this country, not the cause of the larger disease.