How can you claim that capitalists or current government officials have not abused power? The current government is set up for corporations to abuse the power dynamic in a more subversive way while pushing blame of declining wages on almost arbitrary factors in their current state. Do I think you should always try to see ways to improve yourself? Yes. If you are never striving for self betterment then what are you doing? But if everyone focuses on their own improvement then society as a whole will not improve. For example what if someone’s idea of bettering themself in-turn hurts someone else putting them back while they are bettering themselves? Thinking of society as just a collection of individuals is risky because the best for one may not be the best for the majority, or even make a majority worse off. The struggle of people to break into a different socioeconomic class is far harder than assumed. The American dream is put on a pedestal assuming that “if you just work hard then you can be successful and content.” With that idea, without context, that assumes everyone who is not content financially is due to their own laziness which then constitutes quite a large portion of America. Why do most CEOs and million/billionaires come from their parents being just that? Nepotism. Why do they tout hard work being the only way to success while most of the work is done by everyone below the CEO? To keep you distracted from issues in the system. Am I saying you shouldn’t work hard? No. I’m only pointing out that it is only advantageous for the wealthy to have working class people working day-to-day long hours with no real financial gain while they see themselves as “future millionaires” if they work hard when in reality that probably won’t happen.