"this man walked 17 miles a day to his minimum wage job for 8 years... until a kind individual gifted him a car".

the public appraise and coincidental "falling into riches" stories that we're indoctrinated to hear from a young age via media/entertainment conditioning is a facsimile of a carrot on a stick. sink your labor and time into the mystical (drowning) pool of the free market! pull your hand out and see what your apt reward is!

problem is that the capitalist death march of working/lower class people very rarely rewards justly. a feel-good article about a neighborhood cheering for an EMT or a man having a car thrown onto his lap for the "dues" he so selflessly paid is juuuust enough posi-bootstraps-saturation to tide the relatively class-unconscious office drone over until the next bit of dopamine is drizzled onto their serotonin receptors. you ask how much of this is intentional, i think that it's much more of a self-serving buyer's market; modicums of "the process working" are constantly interwoven into the media we consume, an ever-flowing tirade of "THIS CAN BE YOU" ends up overshadowing the why it can be you.