Bobo, there is a lot of luck involved in having a highly paid job. Hard work, yes, but luck as well. And that luck is with you from birth.
It's luck that means you have parents who read to you, who value education, who are able to provide you with the materials you need (from a dry house with working electricity, through to a computer) to do well at school.
It's luck that would give you people in your life to look up to and mimic, people who can give you tips, financial back-up, work experience, help with form-filling and job applications. People who can drive you to uni open days or pay for the train fare, so you can apply somewhere having seen it, rather than casting a punt on somewhere you don't know and have never been. These things aren't essential, but they help.
I was the first person in my family to go to university. That took a lot of hard work. But Oxbridge? No chance. My school and my family didn't comprehend the applying-to-different colleges thing til it was too late. Yes I could've found out and done it all myself. But at 17 and working 6 days a week, plus school, while looking after younger siblings for your mother who's working two jobs, it's somewhat harder to get your head round complex university admissions than it is if you can concentrate solely on your education, and your teachers or parents can give you tips with the forms.
I did fine at uni, got a 2:1 (and yes, worked 20 hours a week in a shop throughout) and got a job straight afterwards, to fund me while I did unpaid work experience in my chosen career.
I've since paid my way through a postgrad. I was lucky enough to get a loan from the bank and lucky enough to have been of good enough health to work evenings and weekends to fund that MA while studying full time at a university a two-hour daily commute away.
Now, a decade on, i do well. I love my job and I earn a good salary, above the national average.
But if I had worked harder could i have been earning 100k, or indeed 60k, instead of 30k? Er, no. I worked my arse off and still do. But starting points are not the same for everyone, opportunities are not the same for everyone.
I knew not one person in my industry or anything even remotely like it - my family mostly work in factories, on the shop floor. I was lucky enough to be taught a good work ethic - but now, I'm surrounded by people who waltzed into internships at 18 because their parents knew the right people.
Yes, they work hard, but people around them were working hard for them too.
Finally, Tinkly's shite about the hard working having higher overheads really sticks in my craw. These things are choices. Being broke takes away your choices.
I'm not there now, but I've been in a place where my DS couldn't have Christmas presents, where we couldn't put the heating on, and where I had to choose between petrol and food. At that point I was working a 50-hr week in a stressful and high-pressure job, which I'd had to return to even though I had a four month old, as my mat pay was so bad.
I have no sympathy for the person who "has" to buy a Starbucks or who "has" to buy a ready meal, when so many thousands of equally hard workers go without coffee and exist off toast.