People with the work ethic you describe are very very shortly found in tents on sleeping bags on the side of the road with signs that say "anything helps".

While there is certainly a small minority of such folks around half a percent of the US population in fact the threadmill between not bothering to come to work and homelessness is so short that not many people are en route at any given time. On the other hand around 14% live in poverty in contrast. Looking at the houeshold income anyone in the bottom quarter is barely scraping by given the cost of health insurance and house costs.

Your perception is an elaborate fiction informed by no actual data. Most of the people in poverty are working hard to stay in one place.