Hard work works, especially in 1st world countries. I know that hard work alone would not make anyone successful. Luck plays a lot of factor as well, but the harder you work in general you increase the chance of you encountering turning point(s) that lead you to living a comfortable middle class life in 1st world country. Be rich (i.e, billionaire)? Maybe not, but not everyone can and should be rich.
Of course no system is perfect, and you can't save everyone. There will be some people who fall through the cracks. But to setup a system such that no one will ever fall through the cracks is giving diminishing returns while taxing to the whole system.
Rich people will always be with us, so does poor people. So does ignorant people who thinks pandemic is a hoax, so does lazy people.
I grew up in a 3rd world country. Competition and social mobility in the USA is relatively way easier compared to my home country. Or I should say, a piece of cake, really. I'm not obsessed with hard work, but I'm not lazy either. I'm willing to Leetcode for 3 years, failed many interviews to finally got into a high paying tech company. Leetcode for 3 years non stop is way way way way easier than hauling bricks all day.
I know what a hard work is, and I also know what useless futile hard work looks like. I worked through low paying jobs such as cleaning service, deli worker, laundry worker.
My most back breaking work was cleaning an entire restaurant who got shutdown by a health department by myself. I only lasted 5 days. I had to scrub rat poop of walls and floors kneeling down with bleach everywhere by myself (yes that was minimum wage). The next back breaking work was an 18 hour shift non stop working at a deli during Christmas/New Year in a really busy touristy location.
And like the author. My single mother was the one that pushes me through many educations. She said "I can't give you anything other than education, the rest is up to you".