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You have it completely reversed. Hard work for the poor most likely means they will still be poor and therefore have very little to gain from it.

This is just not true, at least in Australia (and I suspect most other first-world countries, including the US).

If anything, it's easier to go from having nothing to a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle than it is to go from middle-class to wealthy.

First-world is not most world. And even those places face welfare state dismantlement since at least the 80s.

Funnily enough, most of the people that seem to express this sentiment live in the first world and are educated.

I guess people who live in the third world and have mastered English see living proof every day of where their hard work can get them.

We certainly disagree. You do you guys.