Honestly, my folks were pretty damn good at not forcing their values on me. So I ended up being able to build my world view as freely as it gets.

That being said, every adult in my life had been victim to the "if you work hard enough, you'll succeed" fallacy that was made possible by the post ww2 economic boom in the US.

By my generation, that shit was long gone, and what dregs remained were trickling down the sewer to be sucked up by the 1%ers. But, because I saw people with minimal backgrounds having great jobs and steadily increasing their income via hard work, I got suckered in too. I mean, nobody in my family really had a useful degree other than one aunt, and everyone was doing okay. Homes, vehicles in good working order, bills paid, vacations, the typical idea of what a middle class life is like.

So why would I doubt it?

That lie fucked me before I could figure out it was bullshit, and thus I got trapped as a wage slave until my body broke, and now I'm a third class citizen only able to get by because there's three fixed incomes in the home. By myself, I'm under the poverty line, and have zero ways to get above it.