"Hard Work."

People speak--often, snarl--incessantly about "hard work," which is supposed to be held in respect.

Of course, if hard work were really respected in itself the hard work of the poor would be respected just as much as the hard work of the rich; the hard work of the so-called "failure" as much as that of the "success," the "loser" as of the "winner."

No reasonable person would pretend that this is the case--and so the snarling about "hard work" ends up another hypocritical rationalization of inequality. Those who have prospered are assumed to have "earned" what they have gained through "hard work," those who have not prospered to have failed not only to gain, but to work--all as no one dares ask if the poverty of the latter has anything to do with the riches of the former.