I think this is the essential question. My hypothesis is that working hard can move you a few deciles on the income ladder (and position your children to start

I think this is the essential question. My hypothesis is that working hard can move you a few deciles on the income ladder (and position your children to start from higher up the ladder than yourself). I also think though that people misestimate the slope of the income curve at various points, and that it becomes exponentially harder to get up the curve in the top quartile (I.e. going from a ~$30k (~25th percentile) to ~$60k (~50th percentile) to ~$120k (~75th percentile) to ~$500k (~99th percentile)) Lastly, I generally don’t see people that are not hard workers advancing (perhaps they might not advance as much as they should or would like) but I definitely see them make marginal progress vs people who haven’t worked as hard