What makes this surprising to you?
We've forsaken all pretense of moral fiber, we worship entertainment and self-fulfillment at the expense of everything else. And I say "we" in the "What does the general culture edify and promote"—obviously not everyone lives this way. But enough do that it's really unsurprising to me that we worship profits. After all, if I can get mine and live an easy life—why should I care that your life is hard? (I think the answer is that there has to be a higher calling than simply living for yourself, but in our individualistic society good luck pitching that to the masses.)
This resonates with the people I know. The person I'm thinking of that does the most scamming is also massively overweight, sedentary, and spends every waking moment they aren't scamming playing video games. I think they have some sort of serious mental health issues which are untreated, and likely they don't acknowledge or recognize these issues (it's never been a topic of discussion though, so I can't say for sure).
That's part of why I think this is psychosocial, it's absolutely an issue of mental health and physical health issues combining to create a significant proportion of society that is incapable of taking accountability and has no desire to do anything meaningful or beneficial in their life, they're just wasting away like lumps on a log, even when given opportunities.
As you point out, it's also not about the effort. It's also not just the lower class that is effected. It's a problem at all socioeconomic levels. it's just much easier to hide it the more money you make.
It has nothing to do with not wanting to work. It's about not being healthy.
We do not optimize for health in this country. We optimize for profit making. It's not surprising we are massively unhealthy. What is perhaps surprising is that we're so stuck to the idea that profit making is the most important thing to optimize for, instead of individual health.