The creator of the cliche "Hard work never hurt anybody" never did enough hard work.

Generations of American workers have labored under the weight of this and similar fallacies, assuming such words of wisdom paved the way to success. But when the rose-colored glasses are removed, these commonly accepted laws become lies.

While it is comforting to cling to concepts that promise prosperity as a reward for hard work, the facts don't support the claims, especially if one takes a close look at those who rise out of the so-called 99 percent to become the so-called 1 percent. Rarely is it hard work that is the deciding factor in the elevation, for class mobility depends more on the ability to manipulate markets and funds than it does on hard work and thrift. A slogan like "Guile and greed are the ingredients for rising to the top" may not lift us to the moral high ground, but at least it's honest.

Mark Twain made a literary career out of mocking mankind's tendency to accept simple truths that simply were not true, and his character Tom Sawyer, who whitewashed others into the hard work of whitewashing a fence, forms a far more accurate model of financial success than a farm laborer working extra hours so he might someday own a farm of his own. Reality rules, and the rules of reality dictate that the children of laborers are far more apt to inherit the labor than they are to inherit the farm. Callused hands are far more likely to lose their grip on the American dream than the slippery fingers of crafty investors. But no one wants to believe that because such realism tends to cloud the limitless horizon of the American dream.

This doesn't mean hard work doesn't matter; it just doesn't matter as much as other factors when it comes to becoming rich. To suggest it is the deciding factor in rising to the monetary peak is as disingenuous as it is fallacious. It continues to be a useful marketing tool of those who control labor to keep forwarding such fallacies as facts for those who actually do the work. But the facts tell us otherwise.

The family farm is a great example. There was perhaps no harder work than farming before modern machinery made it easier-and helped to make the family farm a thing of the past. The companies making the equipment and the banks financing the farms all fared far better than the farmers as the great shift occurred, turning the family farm into the large corporate operations that dominate American agriculture today.

It should be no surprise, then, that those who have weathered this last brutal recession in the best shape turn out to be corporations and financiers and not those individuals who relied solely on hard work. Corporate profits have broken records even as home foreclosure records have also been broken, right on through this period of so-called "recovery." According to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northwestern University, the portion of America's growth going to hard working individuals since the official "end" of the recession was only 10 percent while a whopping 90 percent of that growth was corporate profits. And according to Senior Research in Annapolis, Md., the median household income during our supposed recovery has decreased by a painful 6.7 percent. In other words, the so-called 99 percent, if lucky enough to be employed, works as hard as ever - maybe even harder - but is falling behind even as those who manipulate the money move forward and upward. And that hurts, no matter how loudly the slogan-slingers proclaim it doesn't.

There was a time, however, when it appeared to be a real possibility for a hard-working poor person to become wealthy. I remember believing that dream. When I graduated from high school my family was on welfare and we lived in a southern California government housing project, which I left to go to college. Because I believed that hard work was all that was needed, I did whatever it took to get me through college, including working on the local ranches near my university. And I can't deny that my years of bucking hay bales, moving miles of irrigation pipes, and pounding miles of fence posts did lead to a better life. But those of my generation who learned that money worked for them as they sat at their computers or climbed the corporate ladder are the ones who went on to become part of today's infamous 1 percent.

Today, my shoulders constantly ache from those years of hard labor, but I can tell you that what really hurts is the knowledge that I believed slogans like "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It kills me to realize as I begin my sixth decade of life that it wasn't wise to cling to beliefs designed to bring profits to others. And it really adds to my pain to realize that, if I had been wilier and less willing, my shoulders would not be shot and I might be suffering from guilt as a member of the 1 percent instead of arthritis as a member of the 99 percent. Many of the young people in the Occupy Wall Street movement have learned that lesson long before I did, and while it may be soothing to think that smarter people than I will inherit the future, the gullibility of my past hurts almost as much as the hard work.

Mike Ruskovich is a resident of Blanchard.