>my engineer parents and their parents, who have spent years of hard intellectual labour in their craft, have had almost the same lives as workers engaged in the most basic hand labour, who have been coming to their workplace drunk for years and never even faced a danger of unemployment because of their horrible work ethic, because "social country" couldn't allow it.

Good? As long as your parents were comfortable and safe, why is it a problem that less "deserving" people also were? Comments like yours sound less like "hard work deserves success" and more like "as long as I am above someone else, I'm happy." It comes up a lot in discussions of minimum wages - a nurse was fine with $17/hour until a fast food worker also makes that, suddenly it's an outrage.