Look, I'm a bit old-fashioned.

[AngryOldDem]

8. Exactly.

Since the Gilded Age the moneyed class has sold the lower classes on the “anyone can be rich in America if they just work hard enough” trope — the old Horatio Alger bullshit. People still believe it. But if you don’t have bootstraps — which the moneyed class makes sure you don’t — you really can’t move from your station, and you’re told to work harder. That, plus there’s always someone beneath you on the socioeconomic ladder, so that’s success, right?

But the myth abides and people have been brainwashed into accepting it.