> But one of the most contentious bits — rivaling even the socialist policy proposal — was the suggestion that some differences were attributable to sheer luck: “chance acquaintances who steer you to one line of work rather than another, the range of jobs that happen to be available in a particular community when you are job hunting”

This use of "luck", just expressing that someone got a favorable/unfavorable outcome by random chance (or at least, unpredictable/chaotic happenstance), seems fine to me.

The version of luck in the "cursed" engagement ring example, where it's supposedly a supernatural force attached to some person or object increasing likelihood of those unfavorable outcomes, should in theory be feasible to debunk (but probably then comes with nebulous stipulations about how it evades being tested).