Half of Americans Think Hard Work Is Pointless. They’re Wrong.

Coleman Hughes (0:00)

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Coleman Hughes (1:43)

No, they're wrong. Is that true? Is that from a poll or is that your sense?

Tom Bilyeu (1:47)

It literally is true from a poll, yeah. Is an AP Nork American 250 poll. So it came out in June 8th of 2026 Wall Street Journal ran one as well. So you had 36% of people believe it's just completely broken back in 2023, 34% in 2024, 31% in 2025 But when you broaden it out to include people that also just don't think it ever worked, you get up over 50%.

Coleman Hughes (2:12)

There's always been something about that phrase that is overly general and wishful thinking, meaning some people are born on third base, some people are born to familiar wealth funds, and some people struggle so much and have seemingly so few natural talents that hard work seems to return less for them. That's all true.

But what we mean as Americans when we say that hard work will get you somewhere is really that hard work will get you further here than it will get you most other places in the world.

What we're really saying is comparatively speaking, the American economic and political system is more sensitive to hard work than the rest of the world is, is more meritocratic than much of the rest of the world is. America is still the number one destination, desired destination for migrants around the world. If you ask everyone who's trying to move out of their country, whether they want to move out of Ghana or China or Uruguay, what's your number one choice? It's America more so than any other country. I think that's what I would mean when I say that hard work does pay off.

Tom Bilyeu (3:39)

So why is it then that people outside of America go, America looks dope, people inside America go, America looks like ass?

Coleman Hughes (3:46)

People judge the state of society less by their own individual experience or life circumstance right now, and more by their gut sense of how things are going from the news.

If you're watching the news, you're seeing the world's first trillionaire.

You're seeing people amass huge, just huge sums of wealth through AI and tech startups that aren't spread throughout society. It seems like just a small portion of the American economy is growing extremely rapidly and the rest is growing fairly slowly. So from that point of view, even if you're doing okay, you could say, well, you know, it seems like the people, there's a small number of people getting rich and everyone else is stagnating. People around the world, I think, are right still to perceive that, hey, if I'm a hardworking guy from Nigeria, where do I want to be in order to build generational wealth for my family? I mean, it's still America. It's easier to open a business here. It's easier to play the game of the market and win than it is even in very nice countries in Europe, easier here than in Canada for economic reasons. And so I think they're right as well, but their higher opinion of America is more based on the actual reality, the actual promise on offer here. And the opinion of Americans who are already here may be more based on the vibe they get from the media.