> It's weirdly taboo in liberal American journalism to suggest that one's industriousness might be a major cause of one's economic status.

One way to see if industriousness is a major cause of economic status is to look at social mobility. Unfortunately for the argument, the US has lower social mobility than most other countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...

> However, in recent years several large studies have found that vertical intergenerational mobility is lower, not higher, in the US than in comparable countries.

Now it is the case that this might still be true - and there might be factors making different socio-economic classes of people work hard. However, generally speaking, absent those effects, if some people like to work and that makes them rich, that would be seen in a lot more social mobility than appears to be the case.