It won't...and it never did. Some of the hardest working people in society are broke. People are working 2 or 3 jobs just to afford the basics. That shyt was something rich people came up with to convince everyone else to work harder for them.
While you're generally correct, there was a time period from the 1940s through the 1970s when hard work really paid off. The average union job was enough to build up to a down payment on a house without too much stress and build up your net worth to the point that by the time your kids were wrong, you were doing substantially better than your own parents were doing. You didn't need a college degree for that, you didn't need entrepreneurial skills, you just need to land a decent job and do it, and you were pretty much set. Minimum wage was high, taxes on the rich were high, and unions could negotiate good deals for their workers.
Unfortunately, a$$holes like Milton Friedman were pushing libertarianism and trickle-down economics, claiming that the key to national success would be to destroy unions, forget about social programs, slash regulations that keep companies in check, slash taxes on the wealthy, and just let CEOs do whatever they want. The assumption (they claimed) was that such a system would lead to unimaginable profits that would trickle down to the worker who couldn't help but be better off in an economy where corporations had true freedom.
Reagan took him up on it, and by the time Democrats got in power again they were basically corporate Dems like Clinton and Biden who practiced the exact same bullshyt in a softer way. And that's how we got the economy we have today. The % of economic gain that goes to the working and lower middle class has been virtually nothing since 1980.
Personally, I think that everyone who works 40 productive hours a week should be able to afford a place to live of their own (not rental), healthy food, quality health care, and a decent education for their kids. That's the bare basics, and our country could easily afford it. Instead, we've created a system where half the country struggles to get one or more of those things while the top 10-20% are doing great, the top 1% are becoming feudal lords with a labor supply absolutely under their thumb at all times, and the billionaires on the top are basically living like gods.
That sounds awful
