'Working hard' is not a virtue per se. You can work hard doing bad things, like exploiting your fellow man.

I understand this sentiment. I have friends that are small business owners and they do work hard. So do their employees. My friends however are vacationing in Hawaii while their employees are making minimum wage

It's not the hard work, it's the exploitation of labour which is fundamental to capitalism

My friends feel like they are entitled because they took the risk and came up with the idea. But where'd they get the money to start up? Generational wealth. the system creates inherent inequality that isn't based on 'hard work and merit ' but on lucky to be born in that country with that skin colour with those parents

It's the capitalism

I don't think stating objective truth can be reactionary- and there are definitely some hard-working business owners (though I'd argue there are at least as many who aren't, whether they were formerly or not).

But those focusing on the hard work of (some) business owners, without recognizing the broader context, are disingenuous at best. Naturally, those who can see a correlation between their labor and returns- those who are not alienated from their labor, and who in fact receive an inordinate return through the alienation of their employees' labor- will have more reason to be motivated, if they were so inclined.

I think when we note that business owners can (and sometimes, do) work hard- we must note that this is not some individual virtue, and it does not entitle them to exploit the work of others, not even those deemed "less virtuous/hardworking" within the capitalist system.

I think small business owners generally do.

Big business, and land owners and their families don't really work.

Outside of any context? Probably not.

If the context is something like, "The business owner deserves to capture more pay and the power to depress wages and abuse other people because they work so hard", then we're looking at somebody making a reactionary argument.

It would be a very overgeneralized statement with little meaning. What kind of businesses? How hard, comparatively? If so, so what? Is it relevant if they're still exploiting others?

Business owners have more income than workers, so often they can afford time saving technologies in their personal life (eating out instead of cooking, childcare, etc), which allows them to put more time in their business. This may also be a factor in how hard they appear to work. Because your average worker doesn't work a small amount of time.

Furthermore, in the case of business owners, their work directly adds value to their wealth, but in the case of workers, working more than what is necessary often doesn't increase your income at all. So there is an actual incentive for business owners to work hard.

Not on its own, but in my experience the kind of people who say that business owners work hard don't care that other people also work hard, or that the specific business owner that they're defending by saying business owners work hard definitely doesn't work hard.

Depends on who owns the business. If it's a bourgeois then yes, if it's the workers themselves then no.