I disagree with your statement. This year I've been to Mexico, Honduras, Belize and am currently in Costa Rica. I've seen folks driving trucks on tiny roads and working a few hours before the sun gets too hot. I see folks selling from little fruit stands on the road and driving touristas around. In contrast to the States where I just finished 'death marching' a project for 16 months in Lousianna. 40 developers logging 60 hour weeks; working weekends, evenings and holidays to meet deadlines. Sure, they have more and can buy more but that's not all there is to life. Most of those guys live in front of their PCs, are overweight, take medication to sleep, to wake up, to keep their blood pressure in line and race around during the few hours they have to themselves trying to raise a family and 'enjoy life'.
The workers I've seen in these third world countries arent 'performance' oriented. They work to solve a problem (like making enough money to pay the month's electricity bill) and then relax and enjoy family, the beautiful area and good food.
making a choice to spend all day "working" (can intellectual 'work' really be called 'work' in light of construction, agriculture, and other manual labor jobs?) in order to sustain an obese, luxurious modern lifestyle including several spoiled children, tv with 2k channels, 3 cars, 4 bedroom house, yearly vacations, eating out all the time, etc... IN MY OPINION.. does not qualify for "working hard". instead it just counts as making a voluntary decision to live a certain way in order to provide a certain lifestyle.
now, people who work 10-12+ hours per day doing manual labor, 5-6 days per week, with no days off, just to have a roof over your head and food in your families stomach. that is "working hard". and you dont find people living like that except for in third world countries.
now, do you also find alot of lazy fuckers living in third world countries ? hell yeah. its that heritage of lazy unproductiveness that is usually the cause of their undeveloped country in the first place.
the point here is that global standard of living is higher than it has ever been, and if you live in a first world country and have made moderately reasonable decisions in life you will be living comfortably without need for too much real effort at "work" to sustain yourself.