Hard work is a (mostly) necessary but insufficient condition for becoming successful. The main problem here is that much of US society believes it is a necessa

Hard work is a (mostly) necessary but insufficient condition for becoming successful. The main problem here is that much of US society believes it is a necessary and sufficient condition - i.e., they've perverted "you need to work hard to get rich" to "if you work hard you will get rich", or the more pernicious format: "if you're not rich you didn't work hard". The last form of this thought is one of the most persistently toxic concepts of modern US society.