I will be honest, this is a sentiment that I saw over and over and over when i was in Ohio. I lived in Northeast Ohio which is okay as prosperity goes, but Akron, where I lived and went to school, was a town in the grips of a serious poverty problem. But you would see the people who were themselves on social assistance being the most harsh on other people. "I'm having a tough time, I lost my job," "I'm having a hard time, my husband was diagnosed with a blood cancer and we have no medical insurance", "I'm having a had time, our son was born with brittle bones." There was always a reason that they were on social assistance, waiting in line at the food bank. But the next half of their line... "I'm having a hard time for x reason. But that guy in front of me? He just needs to work harder! he just needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps and find a job, work more hours." Basically, "I have a reason and deserve this help, but these other people deserve their suffering." I was told it comes from the concept that every poor American believes they're just a "Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire", combined with the other, more biblical concept that all of the other people in their situation deserve their suffering because of either something they did, or more commonly something they didn't do.
Nick Reding has a good take on this. So does George Packer. Reding observed that amphetamines are a uniquely American (and German - after all, the Nazis were big on speed) drug in that it aids your productivity, as opposed to hurting it, and the "Protestant work ethic" holds forth that salvation can be earned through effort. Packer, meanwhile, makes a good argument that much of the dissatisfaction prevalent in the modern United States is that we have a long-held expectation of social and economic mobility but current conditions have led to stratification unlike anything we've seen since Tom Joad. "I would be succeeding if I weren't experiencing an undue level of hardship" is a good out from that trap, at least mentally. One has to be paying a lot more attention to their neighbors to understand that their level of hardship isn't nearly as unique as they think. But even if they do, it's not like they can really do anything about it, so it's easier to convince yourself that opportunity is yours as soon as you face your unique challenges. I mean, Job was loved by God, even if he did fuck him over hard for decades. We are The Chosen Ones and if things aren't on the up'n'up, it's a temporary setback. Will Durant argued that the reason there haven't been any great Hindu empires is that the religion holds any suffering will be compensated the next time 'round the Karma wheel so there's no reason to strive for betterment. Pretty politically incorrect sentiment but hey - it was 1935 and he did go as far as saying that Gandhi was a new and unique force in 4,000 years of Indian history.