As for the kids who feel life should be handed to them, do you blame them?
Look at how we have brought them up.
Go to school - no one gets left behind, no one fails anymore. Sure it might still be hard to get an A+, but a B requires little effort if you are even a little bit smart.

Play video games, die (Loose) and just pop up with a new life ready for action.
Want to level up without much effort, there are web sites devoted to telling you how to do that for just about every game out there. Why go to all that trouble of earning your way up the ranks.

Play sports - everyone gets a trophy at the end of the season, even the biggest looser. By the time your 15 you too can have a trophy case at home filled with meaningless dust collectors, just for showing up to play. Ahh the memories...

Watch TV, Shows are either about 20 - 30 somethings that lead wonderful lives with no sign of how they earn an income, or they are about 20 -30 somethings that go out and behave like retards (am I allowed to say retards?) with no sign of how they can afford to do the stupid things they do. Or we have shows about people willing to look stupid just for the chance of easy money.

Then of course there is the internet and all the moronic videos that get passed around showing even more stupid people doing stupid things.

If you pump enough stupidity into someone's brain, where do you think they are going to end up?

In places like India and China, there probably is not much of a middle class. So working hard in school, if your lucky enough to be able to go, is not an option, it's a must.
Here kids know working hard can get you to the top, but you can also take easy street and still end up in the middle. And for so many of them, that's OK.