> Hard work leads to prosperity.

Sometimes it does. Other times, it's barely enough to achieve survival.

> Most prosperous people achieved prosperity due to earlier hard work and sacrifice of themselves (or their immediate ancestors.)

Or their distant ancestors. Or due to their -- or their ancestors' -- criminal activities or exploitative behavior or sheer luck.

It's odd how the same people who are prone to excuse criminals on the basis of the criminal's poverty, so frequently accuse rich people of having obtained their wealth through illicit means.

Eh not really. The idea that stealing because you need to in order to eat/have a place to sleep being a lesser crime than stealing to be wealthy makes a lot of sense to me.

By this logic, dead end jobs that do not lead to prosperity, should be among the easiest ones. No one has ever said, "I don't want to have to work hard, so I'm going to go into retail."

At least for me, the one retail sales associate job I had wasn't terribly difficult or stressful except the week before Christmas and Black Friday. And on those days I was so busy that it was always over before I realized it. If I got paid as much as I do now to go back to that I would probably switch jobs to that again.

Every single office job I've had, except my first (which was a data entry job, not programming), has been a lot more stressful a lot more often, and I'm including the job where the first thing my coworkers and I did each morning was play a video game to determine who was going to go pick up coffee (Carcassonne on Xbox Live Arcade, if you're curious, took about 20 minutes).

The best predictor of income, more then academic performance, more then having married parents or educated parents or going to pre school, is parental wealth.

And this is true whether your folks won the lottery or earned their money through hard work.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/29/study-to-succeed-in-america-...

> And this is true whether your folks won the lottery or earned their money through hard work.

This part wasn't in your link, I don't believe this is true.

The problem with this discussion is the definition of "hard". Is pushing a rock up and down a mountain easier or harder than getting a degree in computers? For me it's the former, studying cool stuff in cafes seems "easier".

Other things being equal, hard work is more likely to lead to prosperity.

> Hard work leads to prosperity.

Any guesses on when the people working hard at a fast food restaurant will have prosperity arrive?

the lie is working :)