You can. I used to work in a retirement community in Florida. I met thousands of retirees who either through their own business or from stock earned in a corporate job or from a solid 401K savings had more than $1 million in net worth. There's more than 10 million households with a net worth of over $1 million in the U.S [1]. It's not hard work and perseverance that matters. It's smart work and money management that matters.
Perfect example for survivorship bias. To live in a retirement community you have to have money. So, when you work in a retirement community you see retired people who have money. What you don't see are all the people who made the same decisions, did the same things, but for some reason didn't end up in a retirement community in Florida.
There's plenty of lower-income retirement communities in Florida too. You can buy homes there for $100K or so, so you don't even need to be a millionaire. I would say, that if 1 in 30 Americans are millionaires, that is direct evidence that it's not some impossible, unachievable dream. 1 in 3 have a net worth greater than $200K.
What you're saying is that the majority of people have a net worth
So working harder than the majority of people will still mean you end up with a tiny net worth, the fear of bankrupcy from medical bills at any point in life, the fear of losing your home (if you're lucky enough to get a home in the first place)
America is a country where cops arrest 6 year old girls for the crime of being black. The american dream? Hah. Look at the american reality.
1 in 30 'make it'. 29 in 30 don't, and life is hell for them.
To the above comment I can't reply to, no, the median income in the U.S. is $63K. It's far from hell and no other country produces the abundance we have at the scale we do. Get outside the U.S. and go see the other 95% of the world.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/617390/us-millionaire-ho...