I don't know, they probably get that idea from looking at healthy democracies inhabited by free men and women where wages have not been stagnant or declining for four decades while productivity of workers has soared.  Only in a society of docile serfs do people put the chains on their own necks so effectively that they shuck and jive defending the master class' prerogative of leeching all economic gains to themselves while leaving serfs scrabbling over starvation wages.  So, good on you for clinging to your defunct bootstrap narrative in a stagnant nation where upward mobility is a declining concept.