the issue is the lack of a social safety net means your prospects of getting ahead if you are born poor are basically non-existence. that wasn't the case in the 1980s though, a poor kid could get into harvard with drive and effort. now, they don't have a much chance of going to a public college. the stats are insanely bad compared to where they were a generation or two ago.

the upper classes in the USA have systematically pulled up the opportunity ladder, and horded it all for themselves for the past 30 years. they have also made it so that talent less lazy children have to do very little to succeed in life, by systematically removing them from having to complete with talented hard working poor kids.

they seem themselves as an aristocracy more and more. the idea of meritocracy is rapidly disappearing.