> Still hard to have sympathy for anyone that carried such a mindset with so many examples of it being false.

Except in the day, it wasn’t false.

Boomers and the Greatest Generation actually lived this reality, where working hard and paying your dues allowed even a modest income earner close to the minimum wage to earn enough to own a house, a car in the garage, and support a family with a SAH spouse. This really happened.

My own father saved a decent fortune (into the low seven figures) doing blue-collar work on a 5th grade education. Never started a business, never rose higher than the head of maintenance. And still managed to retire at 55 in the early 90s. The only reason why my mother even took a job in the 80s was to have something to do when my brother and I were in school.

So in the 80s and 90s GenX had only boomers and such to look up to for examples, and those examples largely held up to scrutiny. So that’s what they adopted as their work ethic. And once you internalize something, it’s damn difficult to dislodge. Most people will never be able to do so, and many will fight viciously to maintain it.

Now since then it has become bullshit, but no-one has been able to successfully read the future. So your mockery is wholly misplaced.