This supports a point I’ve made many times: I don’t think most people deeply care that someone somewhere is richer than them. They care about having opportunity for economic advancement. Absent that, the fire and pitchforks come out
A defining American trait, and the neatest bit of elite inception in history.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― Ronald Wright
More seriously, I suspect this is due to slavery. “Temporarily embarrassed millionaire” strikes me as a white attitude and they never see themselves as oppressed because that’s a blackzoned class. In most places people at the bottom look like you and you think “that could be me.”