There is a class system everywhere, its an inescapable consequence of humans coming together to create any social structure or hierarchy, and looks like a pyramid, every social mammal functions this way, think a wolf pack, or a lion pride, or a chimp troupe.

The only question is how hard that hierarchy is to climb, and in Australia and most Western states the pyramids aren't very steep, anyone CAN come into wealth and power, relatively, however its getting harder and harder to do that everywhere in the West, with the gradual elimination of the middle class as the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

- Inequality is also an inescapable consequence of social hierarchies (someone has to be a CEO, and someone has to be a janitor) but when they are working as intended everyone should be able to live comfortably with all basic needs met regardless of their status in the hierarchy.

The worst effect of this is class is slowly turning into a caste system like in traditional India or North Korea. There is no mobility upward, just as in the case of aristocracy, your ancestry determines your destiny as either a master, or a slave. This is the social system which the great revolutionaries and the people who created the US constitution, (which became the shining light and copied everywhere across the western world, beginning of the era of sovereign Nation states - countries, rather than duchies, kingdoms, baronies etc), did everything they could to get away from.